Bill would ban passage of local anti-bias laws
Cave Springs legislator says such edicts scare off business
A state senator introduced a bill Monday that would prevent cities and counties from passing laws prohibiting discrimination.
State Sen. Bart Hester, R-Cave Springs, calls Senate Bill 202 the “Intrastate Commerce Improvement Act.” The purpose is to improve intrastate commerce by “ensuring that businesses, organizations and employers in the state are subject to uniform nondiscrimination laws,” according to the bill.
“It prevents a hindrance from being put into our intrastate commerce,” Hester said.
That hindrance would be a lack of uniformity in laws across the state, he said.
“Gov. [Asa] Hutchinson continues to say Arkansas is open for business,” Hester said. “We don’t want to find any reasons people don’t want to come do business in Arkansas.”
A national civil-rights organization has issued a statement opposing the bill, and the mayor of Fayetteville said he believes cities should have the power to create such ordinances.
Under the bill, “A county, municipality or other political subdivision of the state shall not adopt or enforce an ordinance, resolution, rule or policy that creates a protected classification or prohibits discrimination on a basis not contained in state law.”
The bill doesn’t pertain to rules or policies that affect only the employees of a city, county or political subdivision.
Hester said the impetus for the bill was Fayetteville’s anti-discrimination law, which its City Council passed on Aug. 20 and city voters repealed on Dec. 9.
The ordinance would have extended housing, employment and public accommodation protections against discrimination based on gender identification and sexual orientation, which aren’t covered in state and federal laws.
Hester said the Fayetteville ordinance was unfair because people could have filed discrimination lawsuits based on “perception,” rather than anything the employer or landlord said or did.
Hester said he heard Fayetteville is working on another version of the ordinance, but he plans to get his bill passed through the Legislature before a new ordinance is passed by the Fayetteville City Council.
“Hopefully we’ll get this wrapped up and it’ll be nonrelevant by the time Fayetteville gets around to it,” said Hester.
Hester said the bill has bipartisan support and should pass in the Senate this week and the House next week. State Rep. Bob Ballinger, R-Hindsville, will be the sponsor in the House.
The bill was referred on Monday to the Senate Committee on City, County and Local Affairs, which consists of five Republicans and two Democrats.
“It’s going to be a nonissue on the Senate end,” said Hester, who is on the committee.
Fayetteville Mayor Lioneld Jordan said he supported the anti-discrimination ordinance but he doesn’t know if aldermen have another one in the works.
“I think a community should be able to pass laws based on what they think is best for their community,” Jordan said. “I think a community should be able to govern itself. I would think businesses would want to locate in an area where they have laws of nondiscrimination.”
Jordan said the issue is clear to him.
“Basically, what I look at at the end of the day is equality for all people,” he said.
Jordan said last year’s ordinance called for a civilrights administrator to hear complaints, and if mediation didn’t work, a complaint could be forwarded to the city prosecutor.
About 200 cities and counties nationwide have enacted laws to protect gays from discrimination, according to the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington-based civil-rights group. In 1975, Minneapolis was the first city nationwide to extend protections for gender identity. Other bigger cities include Denver, Houston and, as of Monday night, the Dallas suburb of Plano, Texas, along with smaller cities such as Shreveport and the college towns of Starkville, Miss., and Lawrence, Kan.
The Human Rights Campaign issued a news release Monday regarding Hester’s bill.
“If enacted, this deeply flawed bill would become a highly ineffective policy that would prevent hardworking LGBT Arkansans from being able to live their lives free from fear or discrimination,” it stated, using an abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.
“This is an attack on liberty and democracy, pure and simple,” said Kendra R. Johnson, Arkansas state director of the Human Rights Campaign. “Local leaders in Arkansas should be allowed to choose what’s right for their own city or town. It’s crystal clear that the motivation for this bill is to stifle local efforts to advance equality for LGBT Arkansans. Not only is it wrong, this explicit attempt at legislative overreach is discriminatory, dangerous and fundamentally un-American.”