Rights battlefield shifts from weddings to workplaces
Laws on workplace discrimination next hurdle for gays
WASHINGTON —Even as a lesbian in a conservative Southern state, Katrina Martir managed to thrive in central Kentucky. She married — in another state — is raising an adopted child with her wife and recently started her own consulting business.
But when the former fourth-grade science teacher told her principal in 2010 that she planned to get pregnant with her partner, Martir said she was fired because public school officials feared a parent backlash over a lesbian teacher. Martir, 32, decided to sue for employment discrimination. But she soon discovered that there was nothing illegal, either in Kentucky or her county, about firing someone for being gay.
“In most of Kentucky, they can do whatever they want, I guess,” Martir said. “I had three days to pack up.”
The Supreme Court on Friday delivered a landmark victory for same-sex marriage, but gay rights advocates were already preparing for the next great battle: the expansion of federal civil rights laws to protect gays in the workplace and elsewhere.
“The problem is, if gay marriage comes and gay couples go to get married, a number of them will get fired from their jobs for that,” said Bryan Gatewood, a gay rights lawyer in Louisville. He said a Supreme Court victory may even trigger a backlash from conservatives in some states and cities. “You are going to stir all these people up when (gays and lesbians) get married, so you’re going to get more discrimination.”
Only 22 states and the District of Columbia have laws against employment discrimination based on sexual orientation, leaving millions of gays and lesbians without a clear right to rent an apartment, eat at a restaurant or keep their jobs.
“This is the next frontier after gay marriage,” Gatewood said. Legislation to provide comprehensive federal protections for gays and lesbians nationwide is expected to be introduced in the coming weeks by Rep. David Cicilline, D-RI, in the House and Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., in the Senate.
With Republican majorities in Congress, the bills have little chance of passing. But gay rights groups say prospects for gay mar- riage were similarly dim when that movement started over two decades ago.
“This is about laying the foundation for this legislation to eventually pass,” said Ian Thompson of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington office. Opponents of gay rights legislation are also ramping up. They are focusing a rival campaign around religious liberties, claiming serving gays and lesbians might violate their faith.
Some states, like Mississippi, have passed laws to protect businesses that refuse to serve gays and lesbians as a matter of religious conscience.
The Alliance Defending Freedom, a religious legal advocacy group based in Arizona, is advising churches, religious nonprofits and schools on how to defend themselves from discrimination lawsuits.
Their cause was bolstered last year when the Supreme Court ruled that corporations with religiousminded owners have rights similar to those of individuals under a federal religious freedom law. Sometimes efforts to use religious claims to rebuff anti-discrimination laws have caused backlash. A bill approved in Indiana in March that critics said provided legal basis for businesses to refuse service to gay customers was amended in April to outlaw such discrimination after the state was hit with negative national attention.
Even without a federal law banning discrimination against gays and lesbians, there have been several major — if little-known — advances in the area of employment in recent years. Since 2012, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has quietly reinterpreted the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s prohibition on sex discrimination in the workplace to cover gay and transgender people.
Last year President Barack Obama signed an executive order prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating in hiring based on sexual orientation.
But there are no laws protecting a majority of gays and lesbians from other forms of discrimination, including housing.
Still, Rhode Island Rep. Cicilline, is one of six openly gay members of Congress, is confident his legislation will succeed in time
“I don’t think there is any question that we will live in a country where discrimination (against gays) is prohibited,” said Cicilline. “The question is when.”