5-24-07, 1:00 pm

Civil rights and labor activists are pushing the current Congress to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). In line with the opinion of the vast majority of Americans (as many as 85 percent in recent surveys), ENDA would outlaw discriminatory hiring and firing practices against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. While federal law protects working people from firing or penalization based on race, religion, national origin, gender or physical ability, no federal law exists to protect people from discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

This past February, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) launched an effort to compile the stories of LGBT working people who have faced discrimination. Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, said, “Putting a human face on this injustice has made all the difference in passing nondiscrimination legislation at the state and local level and will be critical in putting ENDA over the top this year.”

In just a little over a month, when this article went to press, the project had already collected hundreds of responses from LGBT people and their families about being fired, harassed or refused employment because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, Deborah Vagins of the Policy Council for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the ACLU said.

According to her, there is no single profile of the respondents. The stories they have received paint a picture of “pervasive discrimination all over the country.” People of all ages, all fields of work, and in all regions of the country report discrimination, Vagins said.

A study published in 2001 by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, shows that reports of discrimination based on sexual orientation are roughly equal to the number of reported instances of discrimination based on race or gender.

Vagins gave a few examples, withholding the names and exact locations of the individuals involved. A Midwestern gay couple and the mother of one of the men worked together at the same hotel. The men reserved a space at the hotel for a private commitment ceremony to celebrate their relationship. After the employer found out about this, all three were fired.

A 22-year-old man worked at a record store in the South for three years. After his boss learned he was gay, the boss launched a campaign of harassment against the employee accusing him of HIV infection, disparaging him in front of other employees and customers, and making anti-gay jokes at the employee’s expense. Ultimately, the employee felt that he had no other choice but to quit.

The ACLU is also assisting Diane Schroer, a decorated, retired US Army colonel with Special Forces training, who is suing the Library of Congress for rescinding their offer to hire her as a terrorism expert after she told them she intended to transition from a man to a woman.

“The Library of Congress clearly thought Schroer was the most qualified person for the job,” said Sharon McGowan, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Lesbian and Gay Rights Project. While one judge in a recent ruling allowed Schroer’s suit to go forward, recognizing a legal basis for Schroer’s claim, “ENDA is needed,” argued Vagins, “because not all courts recognize the validity of transgender discrimination.”

The Struggle for Passage

ENDA has its historical roots in the Equality Act of 1974 introduced in Congress by the late Representative Bella Abzug (D-NY. Gathering momentum and support from a broad array of civil rights organizations, the bill saw its first real chance of passage in 1993 when President Clinton took office with a Democratic majority in Congress.

House and Senate versions of the bill differed, and a compromise bill, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 1994 was introduced. This version focused solely on outlawing discrimination in the workplace, and provisions against discrimination in housing and public facilities that had been in the Abzug bill were set aside. But when the Republicans took control of Congress the following year, hopes for passage were postponed.

The labor movement got on board with ENDA in the late 1990’s. In 2001, AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney described the measure as “an important civil rights bill” that is “long overdue.” Sweeney went on to say: The AFL-CIO strongly believes that discrimination based on sexual orientation is inconsistent with the principles of equal opportunity and equal employment our movement has fought for so long. We are proud to join with a wide array of civil rights organizations, religious institutions, responsible employers, and bipartisan political leaders in urging Congress to enact the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

That same year, several leading faith organizations also endorsed passage of the bill. The American Jewish Congress, the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, the National Council of Churches and the United Methodist Church were only a few of dozens faith groups to vocalize support for the anti-discrimination measure.

The Episcopal Church’s Office of Government Relations expressed broad sentiments in the faith community when it eloquently stated, “we oppose discrimination against all individuals, including gays and lesbians, for the stamp of the Divine is present in each and every one of us.”

Civil rights activists won additional provisions in the bill in 2005 that included transgender people and gender identity as a protected category. This step helped some major organizations such as the National Organization for Women that year lend support to including gender identity as a protected category in the package of civil rights reforms they endorsed, including ENDA.

With the reintroduction of ENDA in 2007, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, a national coalition of labor and civil rights organizations, compared ENDA to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act, saying, “It is based on the principle that every worker should be judged solely on his or her merits.” Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese echoed this sentiment and described fairness embedded in the bill as a “fundamental American value.”

H. Alexander Robinson, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition, a civil rights organization for the African American LGBT community, said that his organization envisions “a world where all people are fully empowered to participate safely, openly and honestly in family, faith and community, regardless of race, gender-identity or sexual orientation.” ENDA is particularly important, Robinson added, because “it will provide protections in the workplace, the source of most people’s livelihoods.”

This past April, NGLTF Executive Director Matt Foreman especially singled out for praise the bill’s inclusion of transgender workers for protection against discrimination. “We vowed we would not support an Employment Non-Discrimination Act that left behind the transgender members of our community,” he said.

ENDA continues to enjoy strong support from the labor movement. In addition to Sweeney’s reassertion of the AFL-CIO’s strong support for its passage, Rosalyn Pelles, director of the Civil, Human and Women’s Rights department of the AFL-CIO, recently stated,

Passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act remains an important priority for the AFL-CIO. It is a matter of basic fairness. Job applicants and employees should be judged based on their ability to do the job, not on their sexual orientation. We look forward to working with others in the labor and civil rights communities to move this issue forward on Capitol Hill.

Jeremy Bishop, program director for Pride at Work, AFL-CIO, the voice for LGBT people in the labor movement, said, ENDA would finally give lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender workers, across the country, the protections that so many LGBT workers already receive in their union contracts, protection from discrimination on the job on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity and expression. In one fell swoop, ENDA would protect all the LGBT workers in 33 states that have no legal protection from discrimination on the job, a remedy against bigotry based on their sexual orientation or gender identity and expression.

Countering Ultra-right Opposition

Anti-gay opponents of ENDA have long sought to confuse voters about the bill’s goals and provisions in order to weaken the broad support its goal has received from the public. There will be a lot of misleading rhetoric about how the bill will hurt small businesses, will overturn military regulations, provoke a wave of lawsuits, force companies to create new employee benefits, force states or localities to accept same-sex marriages and the like. Some say that states should be left to create or reject their own anti-discrimination laws. Opponents of civil rights in general, and this situation is no exception, often argue that non-discrimination laws provide “special rights” for particular groups and individuals.

The truth is that ENDA exempts small business employers and the military. Its provisions are aimed at eliminating discrimination in hiring, firing and promotion practices. It would require companies to create new categories of benefits, and it has nothing to do with marriage, civil unions or domestic partnerships. A federal anti-discrimination law is needed, because 33 states have no laws barring discrimination based on sexual orientation, and 42 states permit discrimination based on gender identity and expression. In those states where such laws have been passed, there are regular efforts to have the law enforced, but there has been no wave of lawsuits against corporations. Usually, the law spurs corporations to make stronger efforts at training managers and employees about applying fair treatment to LGBT people in their workplaces. And rather than “special rights,” the law simply would give LGBT people a legal standing across the board to seek redress from employers when they have been unfairly treated.

Full equality for LGBT people would include protections against exclusion, discrimination, violence and other forms of abuse in all areas of life: housing, public accommodations, social services, health care, faith communities, community and civic organizations, as well as the workplace.

With its specific focus on the workplace, ENDA is a good first step in the right direction, says Erica Smiley, the national coordinator of the Young Communist League and a long-time LGBT activist. She added:

No one deserves to be discriminated against on any basis. Allowing something as ridiculous as our private lives to be the basis for such nonsense puts all working people, gay or straight, at risk of job discrimination. ENDA opens the doors to further policy-making that could eventually lead to better living and working conditions for the LGBTQ community.

A signature-gathering campaign has been launched by Pride at Work, AFL-CIO to bring 100,000 signature cards to Congress by September, when a vote on the bill is expected. Look for ways to get involved at PoliticalAffairs.net and at PrideatWork.org.

--Joel Wendland is managing editor of Political Affairs. Send your letters to the editor