San Francisco has been a municipal leader when it comes to collecting sexual orientation and gender identity demographic data among its residents.
Now, city leaders want to do the same with employees and those who apply for jobs with the city in a voluntary and anonymous way.
In order to do so, however, city officials need to jettison a restriction in the city's municipal code that forbids it from inquiring into the "sexual orientation, practices, or habits" of city employees.
Known as Chapter 12E, the City Employee's Sexual Privacy Ordinance of the Administrative Code, it was enacted in 1985 during the height of the AIDS epidemic as a way to protect LGBTQ applicants and city employees from being discriminated against.