Equality Act fills gaps in LGBT protections

With the country shut down from COVID 19, one bright spot during summer 2020 was the Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from workplace discrimination. This past spring, a Texas appellate court followed suit in interpreting state law. But neither these decisions nor workplaces rallying together to face the pandemic slowed the pace of discrimination against LGBT workers.

For this, all Americans, and especially Texans, need the Equality Act to pass the U.S. Senate. The Equality Act would amend existing federal civil rights legislation, including the Civil Rights Act, to prohibit discrimination against LGBT people in all areas of public life including employment, housing, education, government services, public accommodations and credit.

A national survey by the Williams Institute conducted in May found that nearly 1 in 10 employees of the 935 participants in the study report experiencing discrimination because of their LGBT status during the past year. Things appear worse for employees in Texas: Respondents were nearly twice as likely (18.5 percent) to report discrimination in the past year.

Discrimination at work is nothing new. Nationally, nearly half of all LGBT people in the study reported employment discrimination or harassment at some point in their lives. And both LGBT people of color and transgender employees were significantly more likely to report not being hired because of their status and being verbally harassed in the workplace.

When compared with the rest of the country, more LGBT workers in Texas reported not being hired due to their sexual orientation or gender identity (36.5 percent as compared to 21.5 percent). More than half (54.1 percent) of employees in Texas reported workplace harassment, including verbal, physical and sexual harassment, compared to a third (36.6 percent) of employees in the rest of the country.

When asked to report their worst experience in the workplace, a number of low-income workers, some employed at national fast-food chains and big-box stores, described managers who cut their hours and stacked their work schedules against them, customers who verbally harassed them and co-workers who sexually harassed them.

One Texas woman said she was told she was going to hell during a job interview for liking women, while a Texas man reported his co-worker would constantly use every hateful word he could think of against him and would “out” him to customers.

One in four LGBT employees in Texas (25.7 percent) in the survey reported being physically harassed at some point in their careers and 1 in 3 (33.8 percent) reported being sexually harassed.

Why does discrimination persist in 2021 when a vast majority of Americans support workplace protections for LGBT people?

While some studies suggest that discrimination in general increases during times of economic scarcity, such as during the early months of the pandemic, our study revealed that religious beliefs of a minority of Americans also may explain much of the persistence of LGBT discrimination.

Most of the respondents to our survey felt that the discrimination was motivated by religion: 64 percent of LGBT employees of color said that religion was a motivating factor compared to 49 percent of white LGBT employees. For example, a man from Texas shared that his coworkers would quote the Bible and tell him how much God would despise him.

If coming together around a national crisis such as the pandemic and a landmark Supreme Court opinion can’t stem discrimination, what can?

Although it won’t solve all the challenges, the Equality Act is a critical next step. It will provide national protections for LGBT people in the workplace that are clear, consistent and cover all the forms of discrimination reported in our study.

Passage of a federal law will send a clear message that will help prevent discrimination before it happens. Almost all workers prefer a paycheck to a lawsuit. That message will carry even further in Texas, where state law currently lacks explicit protections for LGBT people.

The House has passed the Equality Act and the president will sign it. According to the American Values Atlas, approximately three-quarters of Texans, including a majority of Republicans and people of faith, support non-discrimination protections for LGBT people. It is time for the Senate, and Texas’ senators, to finally act. Equality should not be partisan. LGBT Texans deserve a fair shake in this recovery.