This past Wednesday New York's state Division of Human Rights adopted regulations proposed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in October that add transgender status to the list of factors protected by the state Human Rights Law, which was first adopted in 1945.

The Human Rights Law prohibits employers, businesses or housing providers from discriminating against someone based on a wide variety of factors, including age, race, creed and color.

Today we are sending the message loud and clear that New York will not stand for discrimination against transgender people. It is intolerable to allow harassment or discrimination against anyone, and the transgender community has been subjected to a second-class status for far too long.

The regulations make clear that the word “sex” refers not only to gender, but also “gender identity and the status of being transgender. Since the Human Rights Law prohibits discrimination based on sex or disability, the regulations make clear those protections apply to transgender individuals and those with gender dysphoria, too.

--Gov. Cuomo

Last month I wrote a couple of diaries about New York's struggles with its own Dignity for All Students Act:

Indignity in New York, one of my least successful diaries ever, concerned an NYCLU on the status of transgender students in the state

Outraged focused on Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Angry Letter to Acting Education Commissioner Elizabeth Berlin demanding action to ameliorate the situation.

Funny thing about that letter: As well-publicized as it was, Education Department spokesman Dennis Tompkins says that Berlin never received it.

Be that as it may, this past Tuesday the New York Board of Regents issued guidelines to schools about how to treat transgender students. The Regents called for schools to respect the self-identity of youngster whenever the subject of gender arises.

In 2010 New York passed the Dignity for All Students Act.

The Dignity Act prohibits acts of harassment and bullying, including cyberbullying, and/or discrimination, by employees or students on school property or at a school function, including but not limited to such conduct those based on a student’s actual or perceived race, color, weight, national origin, ethnic group, religion, religious practice, disability, sexual orientation, gender (defined to include gender identity or expression), or sex.

The Act was to go into affect in July 1, 2013.

In a new report Dignity for All? Discrimination Against Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Students in New York State the NYCLU is charging that he state has failed to protect students from discrimination and bullying on the basis of gender identity or expression or sexual orientation. You can download the report here.

Children’s rights remain largely misunderstood by educators and administrators.

--NYCLU

Barnard College's trustees are expected to vote this coming week on the issue of transgender admissions.

Mills, Mount Holyoke, Scripps, Simmons, Bryn Mawr, and Smith have all opened their doors to transgender women in the past year.

I think certain issues just hit the zeitgeist at a certain point in time.

History is moving very quickly on this issue.

--Debora Spar, Barnard president

New York is one of only three states which protect people from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation but not on the basis of gender identity. The other two are Wisconsin and New Hampshire.

Partially that is because too many people believe that the protections afforded to LGB people automagically extend to transgender people. But the law knows what we have have been enunciating for years: sexual orientation and gender are not the same.

Sexual orientation is about who you desire to go to bed with. Gender identity is about who we go to bed as. In other words, sex is between our legs. Gender is between our ears.

Well, once again the state of New York has a chance to remedy their deficiency. The Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA) is once again being brought forward. GENDA has passed the State Assembly seven times over the past decade, but has never passed in the Senate.