Lawyer hails ‘fair and reasonable settlement’ in LGBTQ persecution case
OTTAWA — A “hellish” week of hard-fought negotiations sealed a deal to financially compensate members of the military and other federal agencies who were investigated and sanctioned because of their sexual orientation, says the lawyer representing them.
The agreement in principle with the government to provide reparations for decades of discrimination is a “fair and reasonable settlement” for the lead plaintiffs and thousands of people who stand to benefit as part of the class-action suit, counsel Doug Elliott said Sunday in an interview.
“It’s not perfect, of course, but any settlement is a compromise,” Elliott said. “And one of the things that we were obviously concerned about in this case is that we know some of our class members are in poor health. Some of them are quite elderly, and some of them are living in desperate poverty.”
The Federal Court action that paved the way for the deal involved federal employees who were “investigated, discharged, terminated, sanctioned or faced threat of sanction” by the government after June 27, 1969 — when homosexual acts were decriminalized — because of their sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.