Court Nixes Judge’s Order to Require Annual Transgender Sensitivity Training for NJ Cops

The Daily Voice reported on the ruling: 

“Superior Court Judge Martha Lynes has the authority to order the training as a remedy for discriminatory treatment of a shoplifting suspect, the Appellate Division ruled Friday.

Lynes, however, should have allowed both sides to file briefs addressing how far such training should go, the appeals judges emphasized.

The original suit was filed in Superior Court in Jersey City by Shakeem Holmes, who claimed that he was subject to anti-transgender discrimination after he and a friend were arrested and charged with shoplifting in February 2013.

The Daily Voice reported that Holmes was born a female whose parents named her Malika Holmes “but transitioned to male and officially changed his name, according to court records.”

Holmes claimed that when she was fingerprinted following the arrest she was placed in a holding cell for males and that police asked about her identity based on fingerprints that police had previously recorded linked to her birth name.

The Daily Voice reported:

Holmes also accused police of making threatening transphobic remarks while he was in the cell for males and after they placed him by himself in a cell for females, where he said the abuse continued until he was eventually released. Jurors in 2018 found city police liable for discrimination. They denied Holmes pain-and-suffering damages, so he requested a new trial.

Although Lynes denied the request for a new trial, she ordered the police department to do “annual transgender bias training.”

While the court’s appellate division ruled that Lynes “retains wide discretion” in determining relief that is not in the form of financial relief, appellate judges Jack Sabatino, Thomas Sumners Jr. and Richard Geiger agreed that Lynes did not give the police or Holmes “a fair opportunity to brief the reasonableness and scope of court-mandated transgender sensitivity training,” the New Jersey Law Journal reported .

“Police in New Jersey’s second-largest city already have transgender sensitivity training for officers but not on an annual basis, the appeals court said,” the Daily Voice reported.

Follow Penny Starr on Twitter