A non-discrimination ordinance passed by Luzerne County Council in June is caught in a battle to either repeal it or put it up for a county-wide referendum.
As county residents and officials trade petitions, lawsuits and challenges, the fate of the law that would expand protections from discrimination is uncertain.
The ordinance does not take effect until 90 days after it was passed on June 9, but since the vote by county council, former Luzerne County Controller Walter Griffith has started a petition process to either repeal the ordinance or give it a ballot referendum during the next possible election.
“I had no idea it was going to be as controversial an issue as it turned out to be,” he said. “I mean, I'm telling you, there's people that come in the office to sign the petition that are almost incoherent about how mad they are about this ordinance.”
But since Griffith and his petitioner committee filed their first step in the process, the petition and the public nature of the document has come under scrutiny, with a member of Luzerne County Council not only releasing the signatures on the petition but challenging them with the county Board of Elections.
What the ordinance and referendum petition does
The county-wide non-discrimination ordinance extends discrimination protections to classes not included under statewide and federal law — including protections from discrimination based on gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, veteran status, and physical or mental disability.
“These ordinances are not just helpful for the people who live here, they're also helpful for businesses to bring new people here,” said Luzerne County Council member Joanna Brynn Smith. “Ordinances like these protect their families.”
Smith introduced the non-discrimination ordinance and a companion ordinance to create a human relations commission this year. Council passed the first ordinance in June, but not the separate ordinance to create the commission.
“The non-discrimination ordinance is a local ordinance that protects classes that are not protected under state and federal law,” Smith said.
The ordinance defines discrimination as “any exclusion, denial, intimidation, coercion, difference or segregation in treatment because of an individual’s membership in a protected class.”
Luzerne County’s ordinance expands the definition of what can be considered a protected class within the county. Smith said she felt it was “about time” groups like the LGBTQ community, veterans and people with disabilities were included in non-discrimination protections for employment, housing and public accommodations.
After council approved the ordinance with a 7-4 vote at the meeting on June 9, Griffith began his petition to either repeal the ordinance or give it a ballot referendum. The process is defined in Luzerne County’s Home Rule Charter.
That petition has cleared its first hurdle to put the ordinance on a 60-day pause. On June 23, Griffith and a group of petitioners handed in 1,899 signatures, which Griffith said were fully verified by the clerk of county council. Per the county’s home rule charter, they needed at least 1,161 valid signatures to advance the petition to the next stage.
Griffith said their committee now needs to get 11,650 signatures by August 7 — 10% of county votes cast in the 2022 gubernatorial election. Once those signatures are verified, county council will have 30 days to “consider repealing the ordinance on their own.”
“If council decides in that 30-day period that they don't want to repeal the ordinance on their own, it automatically goes down to the Bureau of Elections and it gets put on the (ballot) next election,” Griffith said.
Building opposition to non-discrimination ordinance
Griffith is critical of the additional protected classes. He said the ordinance opens up Luzerne County to increased litigation by allowing more people to claim they have been discriminated against.
“We’re creating a problem that doesn’t exist,” he said. “Everybody who has alleged ideas that they’ve been discriminated (against) in the workplace can come to this human relations commission that nobody knows who’s on it yet.”
The ordinance allows for the creation of a human relations commission which would hear cases of discrimination, but it does not establish how the commission will be created. Smith said that is within a separate, companion ordinance that has not yet been passed.
If the companion ordinance is passed, Luzerne County residents can apply to be part of the commission and council will review the applications and choose the members “based on their qualifications,” Smith said.
Griffith said many of the people signing the petition are “not happy about the trans issue,” referring to the inclusion of transgender individuals. They also take issue with language affording protection from discrimination to people regardless of citizenship status.
Griffith said he believes the protected classes are too broad, and that anyone with “purple hair” or tattoos, for example, could claim discrimination if they aren’t chosen for a job.
“They've really made it very convoluted, and they've really made it very difficult for the taxpayers, because we're going to end up paying the bill,” he said.
As of late June, Griffith said he had around 150 people around the county gathering signatures. On Thursday, Griffith said they had gathered around 5,000 signatures out of their 11,650 goal.
“We’re hopeful,” he said. “Twelve-thousand signatures is a lot to get.”
Smith called the petition process “a lot of work to undo an ordinance that has protections for veterans.”
“I think a lot of this is coming from focus on a specific part of the ordinance that isn't really the focus,” she said. “A lot of it is coming from fear, fear of the unknown.”
Access to petition, signatures challenged
On June 26, Luzerne County shared an online bulletin stating that all information on the application and petition for a referendum on the non-discrimination ordinance would be available via USB flash drives.
But, Clerk of Council Sharon Lawrence said anyone requesting a drive would be required to sign a form stating that they will not use any information obtained from the records for “commercial purposes” or publish the information online.
Lawrence said the document cites sections of the Pennsylvania Election Code as support.
Griffith acknowledged that this type of petition and signatures filed with the county is a public document.
“Anything you do with a government entity is a public document,” he said. “I don't dispute that the document is a public document.”
But, he said people are concerned about how that information could be used.
“I would think that anybody who would sign it would know it's public information… some people are kind of upset, they signed this petition and didn't know it was going to be public,” he said. “Some people are upset with the fact that ‘I signed this petition and now the whole world is going to know I signed it.’”
County council member Chris Belles posted a link to the petition on social media on June 30. It led to a limewire.com page where a user could download a PDF of the petition and its signatures. The PDF expired after seven days and has not been reposted, according to Belles.
Belles wrote he posted it in the interest of “transparency” in government.
Belles told WVIA News he did not sign anything stating he would not publish the signatures and obtained the petition in his capacity as a member of county council. He said he posted the document to allow the public a chance to review it without having to obtain a flash drive.
“It’s a public document…people have the right to take a look and help out in the effort of validating if they want to,” he said. “It’s everybody’s government, it’s everybody’s ordinance, and when somebody puts their name on a document to say they want to make changes to the government, everybody has a right to know.”
In a text message to WVIA News, Griffith said Belles had no authority to release the information.
“The public has a constitutional right to petition their government using the referendum process without fear of retaliation or intimidation by the elected official they placed in office,” he said.
Griffith and other members of the petitioner committee have since sued Belles over the online release of the petition.
Belles put a call out on social media for people to review the signatures on the petition. On Monday, Belles filed a formal challenge to the petition with the Luzerne County Board of Elections.
He said while the petitioners “claimed to submit 1,899 signatures,” only 1,584 were available for view on the flash drive version of the petition. He also challenged the validity of 475 of those signatures for various reasons such as duplicate handwriting, incorrect addresses or lack of voter registration.
Using election law as an example, Belles said the board will have 20 days to review the challenged signatures and decide how many they will accept.
As of Thursday, Belles said he had not been formally served with the lawsuit from Griffith. He defended his decision to release the petition to allow the public to participate in the process of challenging it.
“In our charter it says that any…resident can challenge,” he said. “People in the public should know, if you sign a public referendum petition, you should expect public scrutiny.”
Status of the ordinance and petition
Griffith said because the initial petition of 1,899 signatures was accepted, the non-discrimination ordinance is on hold from being enacted for 60 days.
Smith confirmed that, but when the ordinance was passed, the county council amended it to state it would be enacted in 90 days.
“So that time limit really doesn't have any effect on this particular ordinance,” she said.
Belles’ challenge is also in process. On Thursday afternoon, Belles said he had received pages with the 322 signatures that were missing from the petition on the flash drive and requested seven more days to review the "newly disclosed" information.
He said he received them via the County Office of Law and was assured it was an "honest to God mistake" that the pages were missing initially.
TIMELINE
June 9 - Non-discrimation ordinance passed by Luzerne County Council.
June 23 - Walter Griffith and petitioner committee file 1,899 signatures with Luzerne County Clerk of Council to begin the referendum process. They are reviewed and accepted. The threshold for this step in the referendum process was 1,161 valid signatures to advance the petition to the next stage.
June 26 - Luzerne County announces that information related to the petition for a referendum on the ordinance will only be shared via USB flash drive obtained from the Clerk of Council or the County Law Office. Clerk of Council Sharon Lawrence confirmed anyone requesting a flash drive would be required to sign a form stating that they will not use any information obtained from the records for “commercial purposes” or publish the information online.
June 29 - Luzerne County Council member Christopher Belles posts a link to the petition, including the signatures, on social media.
June 30 - Belles begins organizing a petition review committee.
July 2 - Griffith and other members of the petitioner committee sue Belles over the release of the initial petition and signatures.
July 6 - Belles sends a formal challenge of the petition to the Luzerne County Election Board, stating that only 1,584 signatures appeared on the publicly released document, and challenging 475 of those signatures.
