This week the Maine Legislature is expected to vote on a controversial bill that would repeal civil rights protections for transgender people. LD 1046 would say that unless otherwise specified, rest rooms, showers and locker rooms designated for one biological sex are restricted to that biological sex. Transgender people denied access to such facilities would no longer be able to claim discrimination under the Maine Human Rights Act. Among those closely watching the outcome of the legislation is a 13-year-old transgender girl and her family.

They call it going "stealth" and for the past two years that's what 13-year-old Nicole, her brother and her parents have been doing. For their personal safety they asked that their last names and their hometown not be identified.

Susan Sharon: "Tell me about 'stealth.' What does that mean?"

Jonas: "It really means just not telling people. I wouldn't call it exactly lying. I would just call it not telling them."

Thirteen-year-old Jonas is Nicole's twin brother. Both were born as boys. But from the time she was very young, Nicole says she has thought of herself as a girl. She identified with girl characters in books and movies, played with dolls, dressed like a girl, grew her hair past her shoulders--and when she was in the 5th grade legally changed her name to Nicole.

She also used the girls' rest room. But after getting repeatedly harassed and bullied at school and fearing for her personal safety, her parents filed suit against the school district and moved away to another school district where no one knows Nicole is transgender. Their lawsuit is still pending.

"It's not on a need-to-know basis," Jonas says. "You don't need to know. We describe it as 'stealth' and we just kind of keep it on the DL--the down low."

Susan Sharon: "What's your biggest fear?"

Jonas: "That something tragic might happen to my sister, you know. I always fear extremists. And so I always fear the worst, which I'm sure I don't need to name it. It would be too hard to name it. But I always fear the worst might happen."

Susan Sharon: "Do you talk about that with her?"

Jonas: "No, I don't."

Nicole is an outgoing, attractive, petite young woman with long dark hair and features. She looks and talks and acts like a teenage girl whose interests include art and acting. But there is one role she says she's just not comfortable playing.

"I don't think I ever thought of myself as a boy," Nicole says. "The thought of me being a boy just kind of makes me cringe. I can't--I couldn't do it. That's how I rolled. I was like--yeah, I'm a girl. I don't think I could be a boy."

Nicole and her parents have been seeing a specialist at a gender clinic in Boston for several years. Nicole is taking all the necessary steps for pre-gender reassignment surgery.

But despite all her progress with the emotional and physical challenges of being transgender, Nicole has recently taken on another role: privately lobbying against a bill that would require her and other transgender people to use rest rooms, showers and locker rooms assigned to their biological sex.

Nicole has met with members of the Judiciary committee, the bill's sponsor and other lawmakers to ask them to defeat the measure.

"I think that what I want lawmakers to know is that bill, first of all, makes absolutely no sense," Nicole says. "It's pointless, I think, because you're not going to know if a person's trans, unless they tell you. So it needs to be stopped where it is before anything like gets out of hand."

Two months ago, a transgender woman was brutally beaten by two teens as she entered the women's rest room at a Maryland McDonalds. The attack happened less than a week after the Maryland Senate rejected a transgender non-discrimination bill that had previously been passed in the House.

The Maine Human Rights Act has protected transgender peoples' right to access public accommodations for the past five years. But Republican Rep. Ken Fredette of Newport says it's not an absolute right. An attorney, Fredette is the sponsor of LD 1096.

"I sat on the commission, the Maine Human Rights Commission, and I saw two cases come before the commission, and both cases involved issues of transgenders wanting to use rest rooms," Fredette says. "They have found discrimination. They then get to take that finding with them to Superior Court."

One of the cases is Nicole's. But even as both proceed in the courts, Rep. Fredette says more guidance is needed on the issue, even though he acknowledges that transgender people make up about one percent of the population. That's about 10,000 thousand people.

"The real issue is there's no guidelines," he says. "The way the law stands right now is the transgender has the right to go into a bathroom or a locker room or a shower room that they choose to, and if they're not allowed to they get to sue the other party in court--and probably win."

Fredette says the law allows a single individual to dictate where he or she can use facilities, even if other people in schools or businesses are uncomfortable with that use. In her current school, Nicole says no one has ever complained about her use of the girls' rest room.

And Zach Heiden of the Maine Civil Liberties Union says one of the things Nicole has done in the hallways of the State House is to get lawmakers to consider what changing her practice could mean for her.

"She is so obviously a girl when you speak to her, when you look at her, and I think legislators when they confront that and they realize, wow, if this bill passes this girl is going to be told she has to go use the men's bathroom, and to contemplate what sort of harm that might place her in," Heiden says. "That's a serious thing to confront."

For her part, Nicole says if the bill passes, she'll be in the difficult and uncomfortable position of having to break the law.

"I don't think they're going to kill me 'cause I look like a girl--I think I can easily pass so that's not a problem," Nicole says. "But of course just knowing that you're not following the law is troubling to me, but I do think I'm going to be in more danger if I do follow the law on this one."

Susan Sharon: "And go into the boys' bathroom?"

Nicole: "Yeah, 'cause then they will know that I'm trans. I'm not going to start dressing and looking like a boy just to go to the bathroom."

Rep. Fredette has also met Nicole, but he says he's looking beyond one individual to the bigger picture.
"You know these cases are going to be coming up more and more, and my attempt is to try to get some guidelines around this," he says. "It's not to be discriminatory and it's not to be mean-spirited. It's to try to have a serious discussion about a complex issue."

As a compromise, Fredette says he plans to amend his bill so that it only applies to locker rooms and showers. But Zach Heiden of the Maine Civil Liberties Union points out that in the past five years there has not been a single complaint involving a transgender person using a shower or locker room in Maine.

And while debate over the legislation would seem to reinforce Nicole's habit of going 'stealth,' she and her brother say that will change next year when they go to a new, more accepting private school.