By BTL STaff
STERLING HEIGHTS – Sterling Heights City Council has repealed the non-discrimination ordinance passed earlier this year.
In June, Sterling Heights passed a non-discrimination ordinance that would now include gender identity and sexual orientation. Since then, a local group – the Sterling Heights Referendum Petition – gathered signatures to ask the city clerk's office to put the ordinance on the upcoming November ballot.
The petitioners needed a minimum of 5,900 signatures to meet the city's criteria to be placed on the ballot. According to City Clerk Mark Carufel, when they first submitted the numbers, they fell short with 5,858 Sterling Heights residents' signatures. Only 5,180 of those were determined to be valid, 678 signatures short of the number required by the city charter to force the City Council to put the issue to a city wide vote. However, the Referendum Petition submitted a supplemental document earlier this month with more signatures, a sum of what Carufel says is a "sufficient number."
After listening to dozens of citizens, the City Council unanimously voted to rescind the ordinance.
Opponents of the ordinance criticize the council for creating it to address a problem that isn't there, but others, such as Mayor Pro Tem Michael Taylor, defend the ordinance.
"I don't care if anyone is opposed to it. I'll always be in favor of equal rights," Taylor said to The Macomb Daily.
Taylor joins council members Deanna Koski, Maria Schmidt, Barbara Ziarko and Doug Skryzniarz in voting to repeal it.
"We understand that some people are upset because of the religious exemption that was put into the ordinance at the last minute," Sommer Foster, director of political advocacy at Equality Michigan, said to BTL when the group was collecting signatures. "We also understand that some people are gathering signatures because they want to be able to discriminate in Sterling Heights."
