Ga. House panel OKs anti-discrimination bill

Democrats’ effort to add coverage based on sex, age and military service, fails during Monday’s meeting of the House Judiciary subcommittee.

ATLANTA — A Georgia House panel on Monday approved a bill preventing businesses from discriminating based on race, country of origin or religion, a federal standard first set in the mid-1960s, after Republican members rejected an effort to add protection for gay, lesbian and transgender people to the measure.

Wary about other proposed bills that would give legal exemptions to samesex marriage opponents, gay-rights advocates want sexual orientation and gender identity added. Democrats’ effort to add that protection to the bill, along with coverage based on sex, age and military service, failed during Monday’s meeting of the House Judiciary subcommittee.

Smyrna Republican Rep. Rick Golick said the bill he’s proposing “fills a gap” in state law and gives people who feel they have been discriminated against a state-level solution rather than a federal review by the Department of Justice’s Office of Civil Rights, which can take more time.

“I don’t think this is an issue that is rampant in Georgia,” Golick said, adding that he modeled the bill on the federal Civil Rights Act. Rep. Roger Bruce, D-Atlanta, said lawmakers shouldn’t just copy federal language developed in the 1960s.

“I don’t think we ought to wait another 60 years to fix the issues we’re dealing with today,” Bruce said.

The bill now goes to the full House Judiciary Committee. Its chairman, Republican Rep. Wendell Willard of Sandy Springs, is a co-sponsor of the proposal. Georgia is one of five states without a so-called “public accommodation” law. Cities and counties, including Atlanta, have passed laws within their borders. The other states without a law are Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina and Texas.

Some states offer protection beyond federal law: Eighteen include marital status, 22 include sexual orientation, and 18 include gender identity as of March, according to the National Council of State Legislatures.

Gay-rights advocates in Georgia on Monday questioned why the bill moving through the House doesn’t include protection for gay or transgender people. Jeff Graham, executive director of the gay-rights advocacy group Georgia Equality, said adding them to the bill would signal that “Georgia is a welcoming state for all who wish to live, work or do business here.”