Senate passes measure to protect gay workers
WASHINGTON — The Senate on Thursday passed legislation that would prohibit most employers from firing, demoting or refusing to hire workers because of their sexual orientation or sex identity.
The bill, known as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, would extend workplace protections to homosexual, bisexual and transgender individuals. The vote, which required only a simple majority for passage, was 64-32. Ten Republicans joined the chamber’s Democrats, including Arkansas’ Mark Pryor, in supporting the bill. Arkansas Republican John Boozman voted against it. Potential Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida also voted no.
“This issue of freedom from discrimination is a core issue of freedom,” the bill’s sponsor, Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., said on the Senate floor. The legislation “will make a difference in millions of lives, and it will make a difference in the strength and character of our nation,” he said.
“All Americans deserve a
fair opportunity to pursue the American dream,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a chief sponsor of the bill.
The future of Senate Bill 815 is less certain in the Republican-controlled House, where Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, signaled that a vote on the measure is unlikely. A similar House bill introduced in April has only five Republican co-sponsors, compared with 188 Democratic co-sponsors.
“One party in one house of Congress should not stand in the way of millions of Americans who want to go to work each day and simply be judged by the job they do,” President Barack Obama said Thursday in a statement after the vote. “I urge the House Republican leadership to bring this bill to the floor for a vote and send it to my desk so I can sign it into law.”
Sen. Harry Reid, the majority leader, said Thursday that “the time has come for Congress to pass a federal law that ensures all citizens, regardless of where they live, can go to work not afraid of who they are.”
He noted that a vast majority of Americans already thought such a law was in place.
“Well, it isn’t already the law,” he added. “Let’s do what the American people think already exists.”
Supporters described the measure as the final step in a long congressional fight against discrimination, coming nearly 50 years after enactment of the Civil Rights Act and 23 years after the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“Now we’ve finished the trilogy,” said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, a chief sponsor of the disabilities law, at a Capitol Hill news conference.
Two Republican senators who voted against anti-discrimination legislation in 1996, Arizona’s John McCain, the presidential nominee in 2008, and Orrin Hatch of Utah, backed the measure this time. Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski voted in favor; her father, Frank, opposed a similar bill nearly two decades ago.
“Let the bells of freedom ring,” said Merkley, who took the lead on the legislation from the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.
The first openly gay senator, Democrat Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, called the vote a “tremendous milestone” that she will always remember throughout her time in the Senate.
While the bill would bar employers with 15 or more workers from using a per- son’s sexual orientation or sex identity as the basis for making employment decisions, including hiring, firing, compensation or promotion, it carves out exemptions for religious organizations and the military.
Some Republicans said the religious exemptions weren’t broad enough, prompting Senate leaders to agree to a vote earlier Thursday on an amendment that would have expanded the definition of religious groups to provide for more exemptions from the bill’s provisions, including for religiously chartered hospitals.
That amendment, which under the agreement needed 60 votes for adoption, failed by a vote of 43-55.
“We can’t pick and choose when to adhere to the Constitution, and when to cast it aside,” Dan Coats, R-Ind., said Thursday on the Senate floor. “The so-called protections from religious liberty in this bill are vaguely defined and do not extend to all organizations that wish to adhere to their moral or religious beliefs in their hiring practices.”
“We must strive to reach the appropriate balance between protecting workers and protecting religious freedom,” said the amendment’s author, Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa.
Toomey’s amendment was opposed by some of the bill’s backers, including the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington-based gay-rights advocacy group.
Another amendment, which would prohibit the government from taking action against religious organizations exempt from the bill by denying them federal benefits such as grants or a tax-exempt status, was adopted Wednesday by voice vote. It was sponsored by Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio.
The institutions that are exempt from the bill include churches, synagogues and mosques that are expressly religious in nature. This also would extend to schools or retail stores affiliated directly with churches, but it would not apply to those that have only loose religious affiliations.
“ENDA will help create a level playing field and ensure that employment opportunities are available to all, but that doesn’t mean it’s a perfect bill,” Portman said in a statement.
“We must make certain that in pursuit of enforcing nondiscrimination, those religious employers are not subject to a different form of discrimination — government retaliation.”
During the debate this week, most of the bill’s opponents refrained from public criticism of the bill, instead devoting their floor speeches to attacking the flawed rollout of the 2010 health-care law.
After the Supreme Court in a June 26 ruling struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibited the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages, gay-rights advocates made the nondiscrimination measure their top priority on Capitol Hill. Most congressional Democrats and almost 70 Fortune 500 companies, including Citigroup Inc. and Dow Chemical Co., support the measure.
Among the groups opposing the legislation is the Washington-based Traditional Values Coalition.
“Picture your child in a classroom full of students when a formerly male teacher walks in as a transgendered female at the beginning of the school year,” Andrea Lafferty, president of the coalition, said in a statement. “Our children’s education and well-being should be more important than catering to the unhealthy psychological condition of a very small group of individuals.”
In the House, Boehner has argued that the bill is unnecessary and would touch off costly, meritless lawsuits for businesses.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said if the House fails to act, “they’ll be sending their party straight to oblivion.”
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois reminded Boehner of the history of his party in the 1880s over the issue of slavery and Abraham Lincoln’s life work.
“Keep that proud Republican tradition alive,” Durbin said.
Lawmakers have considered extending civil-rights protections to homosexual workers since 1994. In 1996, a version of the bill that didn’t include a sex-identity provision fell one vote short of Senate passage.
In 2007, the House passed a version with only the sexual-orientation component after some members balked at extending protections to transgender workers — those who express a sex identity different from the one on their birth certificates. It died in the Senate.