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Vol. 51 • No. 44 • November 4-10, 2021
Castro businesses surveyed on SOGI data by John Ferrannini
I Rick Gerharter
New San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu, right, signed the document to make his position official following being sworn in by Mayor London Breed.
Chiu sworn in as SF’s 1st Asian American city attorney by Matthew S. Bajko
D
avid Chiu became San Francisco’s first Asian American city attorney November 1 after taking his oath of office in the North Light Court of City Hall, where he had formerly served as the District 3 supervisor. He takes on the position as the office continues to investigate allegations of corruption in various city departments, from public works and building inspections to the city administrator’s office. He also takes on the role as hate crimes and violent, sometimes deadly attacks against Asian Americans have risen in the city and across the nation. Chiu vacated his state Assembly seat to become city attorney, prompting a contested special election to be held next year to pick his successor. Mayor London Breed administered the oath of office to Chiu, the city’s 31st city attorney. She had appointed him for the position after naming former city attorney Dennis Herrera as the new general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. Herrera also started in his new position November 1. “David has a rich history in this city and we are looking forward to his work as city attorney,” Breed said at the event. Chiu said that he was “humbled by this moment.” “This is overwhelming,” he said. Chiu thanked the mayor and said he is looking forward to working with her and the entire Board of Supervisors “in an attorney-client privilege way.” Lance Toma, a gay man who’s CEO of San Francisco Community Health Center, said, “I am just thrilled and excited.” “Since he was on the Board of Supervisors he has been a champion for HIV, LGBTQ, and API communities,” Toma said. With inclement weather outside City Hall, Herrera quipped he has “done my part bringing some rain on my first day of being general manager.” Turning serious, Herrera talked about the relationship between the city attorney’s office and other city departments. See page 12 >>
n an effort to understand the effects of displacement in the neighborhood, the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District has begun collecting the sexual orientation and gender identity data of business owners within its footprint, District Manager Tina Valentin Aguirre told the Bay Area Reporter. “It was our idea because when I started with the organization last year, I’d met with the Castro Merchants and the [Castro/Upper Market Community Benefit District] and I asked some questions around the work they were doing and I wanted details around statistics and demographics relating to SOGI data,” Aguirre, a genderqueer person, told the B.A.R. “What I quickly learned was that neither of those groups collected that data. For me, that data is the minimum of what’s needed in order to understand the impacts of gentrification and the displacement of LGBTQ people.” The move comes at a time when public entities are being pushed in the direction of more SOGI data collection. As the B.A.R. previously reported, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved legislation allowing for the collection of the SOGI status of the city’s workforce and people who apply for jobs with it. Andrea Aiello, a lesbian who is the executive director of the CBD, had no comment when asked about the effort. Neither did Nik Blanchet,
Christopher Robledo
San Francisco State University sociology students Alejandro Barrientos, right, and Hanelye Mazariegos, second from right, speak with The Edge bar manager Michael Schauf, left, Wednesday, October 20, while volunteering with the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District to collect sexual orientation and gender identity data of neighborhood merchants. Cultural district manager Tina Valentin Aguirre is fourth from right.
a spokesman for the Castro Merchants Association, who stated “we don’t have a comment on the cultural district’s SOGI data project, no. We do not currently collect this data for our members, but we are in the early stages of considering reliable, maintainable ways to do this in the future.” Aguirre said that the data will be used in the district’s Cultural History, Housing and Economic
Sustainability Strategies, or CHESS, report, which will be presented to the supervisors next year. “This [writing a CHESS report] is part of the work that all eight cultural districts do,” Aguirre said, adding that each district is doing its own report that will be compiled into a single compendium. See page 2 >>
US Supreme Court rebuffs Catholic hospital appeal by Lisa Keen
T
he U.S. Supreme Court on Monday gave LGBTQ legal activists a significant sigh of relief. It also appeared to take some heed of the fact that a Texas abortion ban under scrutiny could have significant implications for same-sex marriage. The court announced November 1 that it would not take up an appeal seeking to challenge a lower California court decision that favored a transgender patient. The California Court of Appeal had allowed to proceed a lawsuit that patient Evan Minton had filed against a Roman Catholic-run hospital that refused to perform a hysterectomy as part of his gender confirmation. The Supreme Court’s vote was close: Three justices indicated they would have accepted the Catholic hospital’s appeal. It takes only four justices to grant an appeal. The justices – Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch – did not explain their dissent, as they sometimes do. The decision under challenge, Dignity Health v. Minton, came from a California appeal court in San Francisco on an important, but preliminary, legal matter. After the state Supreme Court refused review on the preliminary matter, the hospital chain, along with such groups as Alli-
Courtesy ACLU
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to a California Appeal Court ruling favoring Evan Minton.
ance Defending Freedom, appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court. It was a long-shot appeal, because of the preliminary nature of the lower court ruling. The case involved Dignity Health, a chain of hospitals that includes both Catholic-run and non-Catholic-run facilities near Sacramento. It was a Catholic-run hospital, Mercy San Juan Medical Center, which abruptly canceled the scheduled hysterectomy for Minton, claiming that to do so would violate the “religious directives that govern Catholic health care institutions.”
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The individual dispute was quickly resolved when Dignity Health arranged for the surgery to take place at one of its non-Catholic affiliates. But Minton, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and Covington & Burlington LLP, filed suit, alleging that Dignity Health’s actions violated the state’s nondiscrimination law, specifically its prohibition on sex discrimination and gender identity discrimination. The California Court of Appeal ruled that the lawsuit could proceed on the question of whether the hospital chain violated state law when it denied Minton “full and equal access” to treatment at the original hospital. In its petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Dignity Health chain claimed that the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of free exercise of religion protects a religiously-affiliated hospital from being compelled to provide medical procedures that violate the religion’s tenets. Dignity Health’s petition said the case posed “a profound threat to faith-based health care institutions’ ability to advance their healing ministries consistent with the teachings of their faith.” It said the Catholic Church prohibits “sterilization.” The ACLU praised the high court’s decision not to review the case. See page 8 >>