Next legal fight: bias in jobs and housing
With right of same-sex marriage secured, activists are looking ahead to creating state and local laws to prevent discrimination
Exhilarated by the Supreme Court’s endorsement of samesex marriage, gay rights leaders have turned their sights to what they see as the next big battle: obtaining federal, state and local legal protections in employment, housing, commerce and other arenas, just like those barring discrimination based on race, religion, sex and national origin.
The proposals pit advocates against many of the same religious conservatives who opposed legalizing same-sex marriage and now see the protection of what they call religious liberty as their most urgent task. These opponents argue that antidiscrimination laws will inevitably be used to force religious people and institutions to violate their beliefs.
22 states protect LGBT
Nationally, antidiscrimination laws for gay people are a patchwork with major geographic inequities, said Brad Sears, executive director of the Williams Institute at the School of Law of the University of California, Los Angeles. “Those who don’t live on the two coasts or in the Northeast have been left behind in terms of legal protection,” he said.
At least 22 states bar discrimination based on sexual orientation, and most of them also offer protections to transgender people.
In many states, some local governments have antidiscrimination laws, but they are often weak or poorly enforced, said Ruth Colker, an expert on discrimination law at the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University.
“Typically, the penalty for violating a city ordinance is more akin to a traffic violation,” she said. “State-level penalties can be much more significant.”
Network of protection
As they push for more state and local safeguards, gay rights advocates are also starting a long-term campaign for a broad federal shield that would give sexual orientation and gender identity protected status under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The goal is to achieve overlapping local, state and federal laws, said Sarah Warbelow, legal director at the Human Rights Campaign. Visible laws can not only permit lawsuits, she said, but also deter employers and others from biased behavior.
In the emerging state-by-state battles for antidiscrimination laws, the strongest opposition has come from conservative religious groups that have been alarmed by a few well-publicized cases, like that of a florist in Washington state who was fined for refusing to provide flowers for a same-sex wedding.
“We’ve got good reason to be concerned about these laws because they’ve been found to be coercive where they’ve been enacted,” said Greg Scott, vice president of communications at Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal group.