 And Brenda is here, and Rachel is here as well. And Brenda and Rachel, I know that you were at the tail end of the conversation yesterday. If you have extra words that you want to share after me, I would be happy to hear them this afternoon. But we are back live on YouTube. And I'd just like to welcome back Mia Schultz from the Maryland area NAACP. Mia was here yesterday and testified on H320 and also wanted to be able to weigh in on H329, which is what we heard from a number of witnesses yesterday and we ran out of time. So I wanted to make sure that rather than to shoehorn Mia in that we were able to have her come back today. So welcome. And the microphone is yours Mia, if you could just reintroduce yourself and let us know your thoughts on H329 we would appreciate it. Thank you again for this opportunity. My name is again for the record Mia Schultz and I am the president of the Rutland area NAACP. The NAACP is in a hundred and thirteen year old national civil rights organization, and it is the longest running most powerful civil rights organization in the nation for people of color. We work to disrupt inequality and dismantle racism and accelerate change. So thank you again for having me here to speak on H329. I'll start by saying I just so appreciated Bo Yang's testimony yesterday. She in my eyes really successfully outlined the legal and policy pieces with, you know, examples that beautifully gave real life court examples. So in my capacity here, many times I bring to these spaces a conversation about humanity to legislation. And I see this bill again like like I did as I did in 320 as a step towards releasing burdens that are placed on victims. I'll go on record to say also that that and I'm okay with saying this that the system intentionally makes these burdens. And has has so for hundreds of years. This has been demonstrated time and time again with many of the injustices that we can confront as people of color. So in terms of this particular legislation, I'll attempt to address some of the key components that are part of it. Again, board did a really excellent job outlining all of that. And you guys have the definitions and such but I'll just touch on some of the things that were key to me. Broadening the definitions to prove to prove severe and pervasive to be for severe and pervasive pervasive excuse me, protects the perpetrators and and not the victims and many times the people who make the determinations, don't on whether or not something is severe and pervasive don't actually have the particular experience with that particular discrimination, especially in a place like Vermont, where most of the people including judges who determine the summary judgments are able bodied cisgender white men. So, if you ask yourselves how would they know how severe and pervasive. It could be what lens are they are they using for those standards it could be completely subjective than it has been. So, just, you know, it's, I just want to also put out there that victims of discrimination cases to come forth with it. It's an incredibly incredible amount of bravery and courage to do that. And so to basically go through this process of proving your humanity and work to folks who have never ever experienced this, and probably will never experience this, based on their positionality that there's doubt takes takes a lot out of you. And so coming forth to prove basically this language is severe and pervasive as a victim is quite, like I said, humiliating. I also think about when I speak to victims of discrimination cases people who come to me with their stories of racial discriminations in particular. And I, and I give them like the reality that it's a hard long road to take. And I'll talk a little bit more about that as we go. Generally people though who come forward in a general sense with these cases they're not trying to scam the system. They are they're just trying to get justice. They're trying to get closure. And we really need to believe these people who experienced this who are telling their truths. But we can also believe the people the experts, like myself and many many other people who have, who have indeed experienced some of the things that they're, they're going through and and people and organizations like the HRC who are experts and investigating the times of things, instead of leaving that up to people who don't who have never experienced that kind of harassment, and they can confirm that this is indeed discrimination that disrupts your life. Right. So, to speak on the timeframe for the statute of limitations, I just wanted to and some of the other people who spoke before talked about, you know, the need. There's time that it takes to do things to get yourself safe in some of these particular cases right to be able to buy new housing and things like that but there's also this human element. It's great to come forward and have that courage that I spoke of, that I spoke of earth to come forward and tell your story. And we're all different because we're all humans, and some of us are ready to tell it right away. But some of us need to take this time to really process what happened to them to process the whole thing and and having this definitive procedure that you have six years or whatever amount of time I think that you all know that they have six years to do that is what's needed to just come forth. This has been time and time address in in cases of rate, for example, right that there is trauma that is associated with this and sometimes that trauma takes time to be able to go through this process that I have already explained is quite arduous. And then the other part of the legislation that I wanted to kind of speak to is the piece that you have to find this comparable case. I think Carrie, and the last one of her testimony said this is she used the word, this is an ins insurmountable portal, I agree completely. There have been times myself that I have not been able to advocate for people because we don't, we simply don't have the resources to be able to tap into the health care facilities or the police departments or the, or, or the government offices to find these comparable cases. Right. And even if we did find a comparable case or one that appeared to be comparable. Really there is no experience again, like that of a person who has been marginalized. Compared to a white, white cisgender able body person. So you're talking about things that don't even exist but making that a requirement or requirement in order to file. So, so I just wanted to, you know, reiterate what my other, the other people in the room have already said. The other thing is that this is this, this need this burden to prove that there's a comparable case is almost impossible. And it's really kind of gaslighting if you really ask me like, it says it didn't happen, unless it's already happened to somebody who doesn't look like you. Your experience is now invalidated because it didn't happen to the dominant culture. And so it's kind of beating into this narrative that that what we say isn't true. And then I just wanted to finalize my statement here today by going back to that piece where I said the system intentionally creates these barriers. And I just want to be very clear that I the system is big it's broad it's hundreds of years it's not any directed to anybody in particular in this room. And that it's not personal to anybody in this room, but your position and privilege and structural power right here here. You have this opportunity really to to do that what I talked about the end of the season is dismantle the burdens that are placed on the most vulnerable people in our community so I'm urging you to see our humanity. And, and I appreciate your service. Thank you so much. Thank you Mia. Any questions for me at this afternoon. Mia, there's a in this legislation, there's a real differential or it's an addition to some of our discrimination laws of adding Harris or just the words Harris or discriminate. Can you speak to that a little bit from from your experiences when trying to help with people deal with the discrimination laws that we already have. Is this something you're comfortable talking about. I mean I don't know if I really understand the question. Maybe if you could clarify a little bit more like the difference between harassment adding the word Harris. Yeah, to, to the discrimination to some of our discrimination laws, you know, it broadens it just a little bit but in terms of I'm just playing with the not playing with it but just trying to like understand the expansion of what's real experience for people because determining what discrimination is. Is it difficult under any circumstances is this is determining what harassment is in these cases as difficult. You know, I mean that would take this some of the legal people but in my eyes I don't know and I haven't done a whole lot of, you know, investigating on the different ways and terminology it shows up but it seems to be something that's repeated over time. It's something that you experience over and over and over again in a particular situation maybe that's the only thing that I can particularly like comment on that. But both of them, both harassment and discrimination are kind of are are kind of like connected, I would say they are connected. It's just it's it's just an interesting. It's an interesting change and I mean harassment is defined later on in the bill as a form of discrimination it's just and it's just a, it's just a different. I don't think it's a radical difference I just think it's a different facet of of what we're talking about here. Other other questions for me right now. I so appreciate you being able to come back and and sharing your testimony and they said next steps for us will be to actually have a walkthrough of this bill to representative hang with point earlier where we are switching things you know a little bit around on this because we did have a, we did have this last year but I really think we need to have a walkthrough with the attorney to understand the legal points that are being made. Discrimination and definitions I guess. Well and pervasive and all the stuff that we talked about yesterday that was. And in particular how the case how this law, or that phrase became part of law or understandings through a different process as Julio was testifying to. There's a lot to understand in this in this bill before as we move forward with it. So thank you. Brenda and Rachel do either one of you want to add on to your testimony from yesterday or share some further thoughts. Thank you Mr chairman I would like the opportunity to speak Rachel I'll be gracious and let you go first. Well thank you so much Brenda. Yeah, I would love to add a little bit to what I shared yesterday chair Steven says, we've got the time. Absolutely so now welcome back. Thank you. And for the record again. My name is Rachel ceiling and I'm the director of the disability law project at Vermont legally and thinking about what I talked about yesterday. There were a couple things that I felt were worth kind of adding and focusing in on. And I think is connected to some of those questions you were just asking. When we think about severe and pervasive, we're talking about and I think more explain this well yesterday and incredibly high standard, and one that is so high that what it does is it creates a chilling effect. So people who have experienced bad treatment. I think it's worthwhile to make a complaint or to try and remedy the problem, because it has it's it's not every single day and it's not, you know, as bad as what they've heard of other horror stories. And so I think that is a big piece of why that language needs to come out of the common law that's been built up around anti discrimination law. The first thing I wanted to touch on was, I think, Julio Thompson mentioned that this would be a way of untying our state law on fair employment practices from federal law and title seven. And note that it would also be untying, for example, the Vermont public accommodations act from the Americans with disabilities act so it would have a similar effect there in what I think is a good way, because like in the employment context. One of the things is, one court uses the severe and pervasive standard in employment, and then a public accommodations case comes along, that's about that same protected class, and they adopt that severe pervasive standard, not in the employment context but in the public accommodations context. So it finds that it winds its way into other parts of the law. One thing that I wanted to mention is in terms of extending the six to the six year as a kind of standardized statute of limitations. The other thing that I would have suggested the committee to think about is that right now, if a person wants the Human Rights Commission, or the Vermont Attorney General's Office to investigate their complaint before they decide that they want to pursue this in court, they need to get that complaint in within 300 days of the last discriminatory act. That's a lot that's a very short period of time, especially if you then have six years to bring your claim in court. I think folks have talked about you know the need for time to heal and be mentally ready to make a complaint like that. And so the other piece that I would think about in terms of getting to that six year statute of limitations is a longer period of time to make that complaint to one of those two bodies depending on whether it's employment or public accommodations or state employment. And then last you were asking about me about the harassment and, and adding that kind of as an almost as an or, I would really encourage you to think about it as one of many forms of discrimination and I think the proposed language does that We've had a definition of harassment in state law in terms of education for a long time, and that actually shows up in the bill kind of near the end in the title 16 section. One of the things that I think is important when we think about harassment is that it can be just one incident. It could be verbal it could be written it could be visual it could be physical conduct. That's motivated by a person's membership in a protected class, whether that's their disability which is what we deal with in my project, or national origin or race color or marital status or sex or sexual orientation, or gender identity. In the education context, the way that we've defined it is that it either has the purpose or effect of objectively and substantially undermining and attracting from or interfering with the students educational performance. And I know that that language is proposed to be a little bit modified to kind of bring that standard down as well. And I, again, I think that's a good thing because we do see schools deciding at the moment of complaint that it's not going to rise that level and so they don't investigate it. And I think that gives us the wrong incentives that that it should be that we need to look into these incidents when they happen, and support victims through them, rather than saying we, from what you're telling us it can't possibly be enough. And so we're not going to do anything about it. So, so those were the couple of extra points that I that I was glad to have the opportunity to come back and make. And again I'm very happy to answer any questions. Can you talk about this came up in a conversation with someone else today that I had the idea of, I believe the phrase that I believe the phrase that Julio used was on hitching from from state law and federal law can you can you give us an idea you said and you said that this particular bill. It's going to be a positive thing. Yeah. And, you know, I, my, my closest parallel to this is when we discuss when we in the past when we've discussed minimum wage law where our minimum wage is higher than the federal law so so the more generous number is what's considered active. And then yet we have this time and a half thing where Vermont law restricts people from work who work those other jobs. Those exemptions especially from getting time and a half, but federal law says no no no no you can't do that. And so that to me is what the on hitching there but but but does it mean anything different in this in this law. So, what I think it means that's a little different here is that in Vermont, our courts would no longer be relying on, for example cases out of Texas, or California, or Louisiana, in terms of how those judges are interpreting because they those courts are still relying on that higher standard of severe and pervasive. And our judges here in Vermont would be making a new common law in interpreting your statute. At this at this relax relax is a difficult way of putting it at this different standard that is not meant to be such an incredibly high bar. So I think my hands very well, but that incredibly high bar. So I think the way that it's, I think you have a good analogy in terms of the wage, the minimum wage piece which is the federal government set this floor of minimum wage. We went above and beyond that floor right so you, that's a floor and we're going above and beyond. And in the context of these anti discrimination statutes, the courts established this very high bar, and we're saying that actually the floor should be lower down to be able to, you know, get over this bar, it shouldn't be above my head it should be at my neck, right. And so I think that's maybe a little bit different is we're not trying to go above and beyond we're trying to say people shouldn't have to reach such a high standard in order to get justice. All right, no thank you for that clarification it's just, it's some in some that's something that will we investigate as we move forward, as well to understand thank you questions for Rachel. All right, Brenda welcome back. Thank you Chairman Stevens and follow everybody again. I wanted to add just a couple of quick things to what I would outline yesterday. I'm sorry if it was a bit of a history lesson but we're still going to go back there again, and almost 40 years ago, when this was initialized. We did not have computers we did not have handheld devices we did not have access to each other the way that we do now, the, the ways that people can be harassed and and people can be hated as grown exponentially and we have not kept track. One of the things that's important to realize is that this bill was crafted without much input from the federal government, and let alone other governmental entities that had a handle on it. Now we're at a point almost 40 years later, where we have the opportunity to bring this law into the next century. Literally, a foundational piece of this legislation is to, I wouldn't say rose, low, lowering the bar, but making it accessible to the marginalized communities. Every day we have lgbtq kids, we have marginalized communities we have folks who face harassment on all levels, electronically, in person, and through their their peer networks that I can't even begin to imagine. Yet, we have not given the school, the school systems, or our court systems enough tools to be able to look at this and say, yeah, most. Yeah, I consider that awful behavior but it doesn't reach this high mark. We want it to reach the high, we don't want to reach the high mark we want the mark to be different. We want us to be able to look at these differently. Our reporting systems need to be easier to access. We need to ensure that there's safety in the reporting systems, and it really just modernizes what we had started nearly four decades ago and brings us brings us to a new level. And with that said, I just want to make sure that we do this diligence carefully that we look at the overall effects where it crosses into things that we've never imagined and how are we going to imagine them in the future as well. I do appreciate the opportunity to come back and just reiterate some of those things that are important to all of us but most specifically the people who are victims of harassment and bias and hate. It's everywhere. Thank you. Brenda questions. Brenda with your work and the work that you've done in your career with discrimination. What percentage of people. This is a hard I don't know if I'm going to word this right. We heard from Kerry Brown that 80% of women experience sexual harassment at work. And that's, that's a statistic that's fine. But, you know, in your line of work where where, and the folks that you deal with. And you find that they have a have a problem even reporting discrimination for the fear of, I mean, one of one of these bills, the one one part of this bill was the idea that of comparing, like the discrimination that you're suffering or experiencing is going to be the same as someone else's. Do you have people who are not reporting instances simply because the bar is too high is that is that what you're saying. That's a that's a great question. And one of the things that I hear is incidentally, things get back to me with regard to, did you call the police. No, they, they won't listen they didn't respond they didn't come out. That's actually the initial point of contact for a lot of this harassment and discrimination. The reporting agencies the folks that we talked to sometimes just don't want to listen or it doesn't feel it doesn't meet their objectives to what they feel would happen in the court farther up I think the message comes from the top down that there are being listened to the reports are being taken that the hierarchy now is more easy to access and to have these reports done and I look at specifically things that happen in schools. When when kids report to whoever they might a teacher guidance counselor that they've been harassed or that or that somebody threatened them online. We don't hear about those we don't get that and I'm betting it happens every day from a community standpoint I don't know anybody who has not in my community. The transgender community who has not had a bias or a discrimination thing happened to them and very hard to describe specifically because each one is like a fingerprint. Nobody, nobody implements hate the same way, but there's a theme of discrimination and bias that just underlies it all 100% might be too high 50% might be way too low. But again, I don't hear all the wonderful, wonderful stories I hear the harder stories I hear what happens to people and where they get roadblocks or where they get stopped or why they don't go on. And usually it comes to me like, No, I didn't report it. Why not. Nobody wanted to listen. No agency took up the information. And it may be the nature of the beast. Because of the fear of people have of being their authentic selves of being out to the community. I'm by far a bold exception and there aren't a lot of people that want to display themselves in a way that takes into consideration all of the history, but yet it's there. It drives me it makes me motivated to talk. I'm sure Mia has equally the number of stories that she can relate. People who got harassed people who were discriminated against, but it didn't go any further. And whether that's our legal system or bills that keep us pinned to the floor. I don't know. I'm hoping that this will be at least a good step in the right direction and I really do advocate you pass in this. And thank you very much. I hope that answered your question. If you have a hand up you're okay or you have a question. Okay. All right. Now, thank you all. I'm glad you came back to fill in, you know, to fill in some of the gaps and the Gavin opportunity to, to further your testimony. And it's good to see you and I hope you all have a good weekend. And we will be like said, our next step on this bill is to get a full walk through to understand the details that you've all in the previous witnesses have alluded to in their testimony. So, thank you.