WASHINGTON—It is the most sweeping equality bill to ever hit the floor of the Senate and House of Representatives. It is bold and it is long overdue.
Hoping to benefit from the positive LGBT momentum gained after last month’s Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage, the Equality Act of 2015 takes aim at preventing discrimination in public accommodations, public education, employment, housing, federal funding, jury service, legal protections, and credit. The bill would amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity among the other protected classes.
It was introduced to both houses last week in a moving ceremony in the Lyndon B. Johnson Room in the US Senate, with a view of the Supreme Court building in the distance. (See this week’s Capitol Beat column.)
While most Americans when questioned have a belief that gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals are protected under the law, according to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), 31 states do not have laws that explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
“This is completely wrong: Americans do not support discrimination,” said House sponsor Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI). “Fairness and equality are core American values.”
Most Americans agree. The larger problem is that they think such basic protections are already in place. In a June 2014 Huffington Post/YouGov poll, 62 percent of respondents said they thought it was “currently illegal under federal law to fire someone for being gay or lesbian.”
In a more far-reaching survey released last week of likely voters in the 2016 Presidential election, four out of five respondents believe that non-discrimination is a basic civil right. Furthermore, these same respondents reported that they were likely to vote against candidates for public office who oppose granting these same basic civil rights.
Seventy-eight percent of likely voters support employment protections for LGBT persons, compared with 16 percent who do not. Fifty-nine percent of voters said they would be less likely to support a presidential candidate who opposes nondiscrimination employment policies.
Still, when last week’s press conference ended with 163 co-sponsors in the House and 40 in the Senate, not a single Republican had indicated support. And as shocking as the bi-partisan divide is on the bill, and as obvious is its need, the road to passage will not be easy.
In every Congress since 1994, there has been an effort made to pass the much more narrowly focused Employment Non-Discrimination Act, only to have it fail under the theory that such a bill would violate a person’s religious liberty.
Ryan Anderson, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, and this week’s Creep of the Week, refuted the legitimacy of the Equality Act on that basis.
“The ‘Equality Act’ is a misnomer,” Anderson wrote in The Daily Signal. “The bill does not protect equality before the law, but unnecessarily and unjustly violates freedom by creating special privileges based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”
In that regard, the bill includes a clarification that states the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) cannot be used to discriminate against LGBT people.
And while both Cicilline and Senate sponsor Sen. Jeff Merkely (D-OR) admit the road to passage will be a tough one, the timeliness of its introduction just a month after the ruling on same-sex marriage by the Supreme Court works decidedly in its favor. So too does the upcoming Presidential election.
For any Presidential candidate to win next year’s election, they would need not only to carry the LGBT vote, they were also need the support of the Millennials at the voting booth. Millennials are those voters born between 1980 and 1997, and have traditionally leaned Republican in 2010, 2012 and 2014.
Yet, according to the HRC survey, 86 percent of them support equality in the workplace, and 65 percent were less likely to vote for a candidate who did not support non-discrimination. Despite their current bombasted rhetoric, Republicans are well aware of these numbers, as are the sponsors of the Equality Act of 2015 bill.
“We stand here with our arms open to those who oppose this, to the leadership who will block this,” said Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY), the first openly gay man to represent New York in Congress.
“Were you standing in the doorway, or were you opening the door?” he asks. “There is still time to do the right thing.”
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