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JANUARY 31, 2012 Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has signed into law “An Act Relative to Gender Identity,” also known as the “transgender equal rights law,” which expands Massachusetts anti-discrimination laws to protect from discrimination against transgender individuals in employment, education, housing, and credit.  The legislation makes “gender identity” a protected class alongside others such as race, color, religious creed, national origin, ancestry, sex, age, disability, mental illness, sexual orientation, and genetics.  The legislation also expands the Massachusetts hate crimes statutes to add “gender identity” as a protected class.   The new law will go into effect July 1, 2012. 1.  What is Gender Identity?  The new law defines “gender identity” as “a person’s gender-related identity, appearance or behavior, whether or not that gender-related identity, appearance or behavior is different from that traditionally associated with the person’s physiology or assigned sex at birth.”  A person may prove his or her gender identity by demonstrating “medical history, care or treatment of the gender-related identity, consistent and uniform assertion of the gender-related identity or any other evidence that the gender-related identity is sincerely held, as part of a person’s core identity.”  The law therefore appears to protect not only those individuals who have had...

Both the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the federal government have issued new regulations designed to help safeguard the personal information of consumers.  The federal regulations, known as the “Red Flag Rules,” were promulgated by the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) in conjunction with several other agencies.  The Red Flag Rules became effective January 1, 2008, but the FTC delayed enforcement thereof until January 1, 2011 while Congress finalized legislation limiting the scope of businesses covered by the Rules.  The Red Flag Rules require financial institutions and creditors who maintain certain types of customer accounts to develop and implement programs designed to detect, prevent and mitigate identity theft.  Each program must include policies and procedures to identify and detect account activity that may signal identity theft (“Red Flags”) and to respond appropriately to these Red Flags when they are detected.  The term “creditor”, as defined in the Red Flag Program Clarification Act of 2010, means a creditor that (a) obtains or uses consumer reports in connection with a credit transaction, (b) furnishes information to consumer reporting agencies in connection with a credit transaction or (c) advances funds to or on behalf of a person, based on an obligation of the person to...

New Rules for Employers Regarding Requests for Job Applicants’ Criminal History OCTOBER 01, 2010 As part of an overhaul of the Criminal Offender Register Information (“CORI”) system in Massachusetts, new restrictions will apply to employer requests for criminal history information, beginning November 4, 2010. Here are some of the details. 1. New prohibition against criminal history requests on initial written application forms, with limited exceptions As of November 4, 2010, employers are prohibited under a new subsection of the Fair Employment Practices from requesting any criminal history information on an initial written job application form. This “Ban the Box” provision means employers must change their application forms and get rid of the ubiquitous felony/misdemeanor checkbox. This new rule does not apply to employers that are required by law not to employ people who have been convicted of particular offenses, or to positions for which there is a disqualification under law based on a criminal conviction. (For example, positions in the fields of banking and financial services, child education or care, and health services, to name a few, have statutorily-mandated disqualifications prohibiting people with certain types of criminal convictions from being employed in those positions.) Importantly, the new law does not...