The Vermont Human Rights Commission has chosen staff attorney Big Hartman to lead the organization starting July 31, after the outgoing executive director departs.
Hartman, 43, stood out from the other applicants in terms of energy and lived experience, including breaking barriers as an attorney, said Rep. Kevin “Coach” Christie, D-Hartford, who chairs the commission.
The current commission director, Bor Yang, is leaving Friday to assume a civil rights job in Oregon.
Hartman, the first openly queer, non-binary person to be the commission’s director, “understands from a day-to-day perspective the plight of our protected classes,” Christie said in an interview.
The Vermont Human Rights Commission is a state agency assigned to investigate discrimination claims in housing, public accommodations and state employment, and litigating such cases, as needed.
Hartman, who was born and grew up in New York, said they’ve been interested in social justice issues since college. As a student at Vermont Law School, from which they graduated magna cum laude in 2005, Hartman was active with the National Lawyers Guild, a progressive bar association.
“I’ve certainly always felt that there were big injustices in the world that needed to be addressed,” Hartman said in an interview after the appointment was announced on Monday. “I knew it from a very young age, and it’s just a driving force of everything I do in my life.”
Their priority as new director of the Vermont Human Rights Commission includes revamping the agency’s website, as well as offering training opportunities to prevent discrimination in areas such as fair housing laws, unconscious bias and workplace harassment.
Hartman also plans to speak and write about what Vermonters can do to uphold civil rights, given recent rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court. They cited as examples one recent decision on a Colorado case that provides an exception to civil rights laws prohibiting discrimination in the public marketplace, and another decision involving Harvard College and the University of North Carolina, which struck down the use of affirmative action admissions programs in colleges.
Hartman said the decisions are making marginalized communities worried about the future of civil rights in the country. “And it’s something that I’m very concerned about,” they said.
Christie, the commission chair, credited Hartman for breaking a number of glass ceilings in their legal career.
Hartmand said that in their first job after law school, when they identified as a woman, they had been the first female attorney at a Stowe law office, which represented workers’ compensation claimants and personal injury plaintiffs.
They had also been the first female staff attorney at the Vermont State Employees’ Association, they said, where they worked from 2007 to 2013, representing the union and its members in cases before the Vermont Labor Relations Board and in Vermont courts.
Before joining the state Human Rights Commission in 2021, Hartman operated a solo law practice focused on preventing workplace harassment through training and management consultations.
Hartman sees the commission job as another step forward in increasing representation within the Vermont legal world.
“There really aren’t a lot of visible, nonbinary people in the public sphere, and certainly not a lot of nonbinary attorneys that I know,” they said, “so I’m happy to step forward and be a voice for all those who feel marginalized.”
Outright Vermont, an LGBTQ+ youth nonprofit organization, hailed Hartman’s appointment as commission director, saying it shows the agency’s commitment to creating a safe, welcoming and inclusive state.
“We know that LGBTQ+ youth are counting on adults in these leadership positions to help make significant strides towards eradicating discrimination, particularly in the systems that serve youth,” said Outright Vermont’s executive director, Dana Kaplan.
Mia Schultz, president of the Rutland Area NAACP, also welcomed the news from the commission.
“They’ve always been an important entity for us at the NAACP,” she said, “and so we hope that they continue to be a resource for us and the communities that we encounter and serve.”
