Chicago human-rights activists Art Johnston and Rick Garcia, founder and public policy director, respectively, of Equality Illinois, received the first annual Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Committee Community Leadership Award from the Illinois State Bar Association (ISBA) at the organization’s Annual Meeting held recently at The Abbey on Lake Geneva in Fontana, Wis.
The recipients were selected by the ISBA’s Standing Committee on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. Among the criteria for the award is that the recipients must have, by individual example and education, worked to eliminate discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
After a lobbying effort by Johnston, Garcia and others that spanned two decades, the Illinois legislaturepassed in January 2005 amendments to the Illinois Human Rights Act that ban sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination. Illinois became only the sixth state to expressly include gender identity in the definition of sexual orientation.