https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying ... ill-acrossDemocrats want businesses to help get LGBT bill across finish line
BY ALEX GANGITANO - 02/23/21 06:00 AM EST
Democrats want businesses to help get LGBT bill across finish line
The House this week is set to pass legislation that would expand LGBT protections, but Democrats are looking for help from the business community to get it through the Senate with GOP support. Major companies and trade associations are largely endorsing the Equality Act and putting their lobbying weight behind the bill in an attempt to get enough Senate Republicans on board. President Biden on Friday urged swift action on the legislation, which would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity for housing, education, employment, credit, jury service and public accommodations. GOP support is needed to reach the 60-vote threshold in the evenly split Senate.
Some of the biggest names in corporate America are members of the Human Rights Campaign’s Business Coalition pushing for passage of the Equality Act, including American Express, AT&T, Bank of America, Chevron, CVS, General Motors, Marriott and Verizon. The legislation not only aligns with corporate values of fairness and inclusion, it’s also good business sense,” said Human Rights Campaign Director for the Workplace Equality Program Beck Bailey. “Leading employers have long offered nondiscrimination protections for their LGBTQ workers ensuring they are empowered to bring their full selves to work, but understand that employees and their families must have the uniform civil rights protections in other aspects of life.”
The bill, reintroduced Thursday by Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), passed the House in May 2019, with eight Republicans crossing the aisle, but wasn’t taken up in what was then the GOP-controlled Senate. The measure would need the support of 10 Republican senators to overcome a legislative filibuster and land on the president’s desk. The business community rallied around it in 2019 and is re-upping its commitment this time around. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) recently touted the business community’s role as Democrats aim to get the Equality Act signed into law within the first 100 days of Biden’s presidency. “Ending discrimination in the workplace and every other aspect of life, not only is good for the LGBTQ community, for our whole society, but also for the businesses that want the very best. They should be hiring without any concern of complaint about the diversity that they are introducing into there. That’s why we think we’ll have strong bipartisan support. We think the business community will help us in the Senate, yeah,” Pelosi told reporters on Jan. 28. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine was the sole Republican co-sponsor of the legislation in the previous Congress. In June, she joined a group of Democrats calling on the Senate to bring it up for a vote. The measure hasn’t been reintroduced in the Senate this year, but Democratic Sens. Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Cory Booker (N.J.) and Tammy Baldwin (Wis.) are expected to do so this week.
Advocacy groups working with the business community haven’t revealed which GOP senators they plan to target. While Collins has signaled support for the bill, other potential swing votes like Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) have indicated opposition. The bill would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and the Jury Selection and Services Act by extending existing protections to sexual orientation and gender identity. Another amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would include prohibiting discrimination in public spaces on the basis of sex and expanding public spaces covered in the law to include retail stores, banks, legal services and transportation services.
The Supreme Court in June ruled in a 6-3 decision that the country’s laws on sex discrimination in the workplace also apply to discrimination against LGBT individuals. The Justice Department in the waning days of the Trump administration issued a last-minute memo to limit the scope of the decision, but Biden’s acting head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division revoked the directive last month. Proponents of the bill are hoping to avoid any chance of a similar reversal during a future administration by getting the Equality Act signed into law. Those supporters include many in Silicon Valley, including Apple, Facebook, Intel and Microsoft, who say winning over Senate Republicans is the final piece to that puzzle. “As we’ve seen, businesses thrive when they are open to everyone, and the LGBTQ community deserves equal rights, protections, and opportunities. That is why we strongly support the House passage of the Equality Act and encourage the Senate to quickly follow suit,” said Peter Chandler, TechNet’s vice president of federal policy and government relations.
Heritage and the right-wing are mobilizing big resources to try and kill it. Hey right-wing, how about protecting the living vs. abortion fantasies:
More: https://www.heritage.org/life/commentar ... y-and-moreEquality Act Is Trojan Horse for Abortion Lobby and More
Feb 22nd, 2021 COMMENTARY BY Melanie Israel Research Associate, DeVos Center
Melanie is a research associate in the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Should the act ever become law, it would be disastrous for all Americans who care about protecting innocent unborn life.
In practice, it could mean that a health care provider would be discriminating on the basis of sex if they refused to perform an abortion procedure.
Equally disturbing is the Equality Act’s lack of any conscience protections for individuals with moral or religious objections.
If you search the text of the Equality Act for the term “abortion,” you won’t find it. And while that might be by design, should the act ever become law, it would be disastrous for all Americans who care about protecting innocent unborn life. The House of Representatives is set to vote on this dangerous piece of legislation this week. In addition to being a Trojan Horse for abortion promotion, the Equality Act promotes inequality because it would penalize Americans for their beliefs about marriage and biological sex.
The Equality Act would amend federal civil rights law by adding “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as protected classes. In recent years, Heritage Foundation scholars have sounded the alarm about various groups that would be harmed should the act become law, including employers and employees, medical professionals, parents and children, women, and nonprofits and volunteers. The list doesn’t end there, and pro-life Americans should join the chorus of people rejecting this radical policy.
>>> How Could Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) Laws Affect You?
The Equality Act would have a devastating impact on a host of current pro-life policies and protections. It would lay the groundwork for eliminating prohibitions on taxpayer-funded abortions at the state and federal level; purge existing statutory conscience-protection provisions for pro-life individuals and entities in the context of health care; and nullify hard-fought court battles that upheld religious freedom protections for people and organizations, such as the Little Sisters of the Poor, an order of Catholic nuns that has spent nearly a decade in litigation over Obamacare’s onerous contraception mandate.
How would the Equality Act accomplish these things, all of which have been highlighted as priorities by the abortion lobby?
The Equality Act adds the term “sex” to Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act on public accommodations to mean pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions. Both the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals have interpreted “related medical condition” to include abortion. Because of the way the Equality Act is drafted, this new definition of sex discrimination—understood to include a medical condition such as abortion—would be applied to areas of law, such as federally assisted programs, public accommodations, and Obamacare’s nondiscrimination provision. In practice, it could mean that a health care provider would be discriminating on the basis of sex if they refused to perform an abortion procedure; a hospital could be discriminating on the basis of sex if it refused to allow abortions to take place within its facility; and health insurance plans could be discriminating on the basis of sex if they do not include coverage for elective abortions.
The Equality Act specifically states that no claims for relief can be made under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which is the law that provided a pathway for groups such the Little Sisters of the Poor and businesses such as Hobby Lobby to receive relief at the Supreme Court from Obamacare’s onerous contraception mandate. According to the RFRA, the federal government can substantially burden the exercise of religion without demonstrating a compelling government interest that is accomplished through the least restrictive means possible. The Equality Act is explicitly clear that the legislation nullifies RFRA’s applicability.
Lots more right-wing media also going nuts. And of course... Marj Q. Green:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 06385.htmlMarjorie Taylor Greene wants to replace LGBTQ+ Equality Act
The Georgia congresswoman has a history of anti-trans remarks
Josh Marcus San Francisco Tuesday 23 February 2021 20:39
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Georgia representative who was was stripped of her committee assignments this month for a history of controversial statements, filed amendments on Tuesday attempting to wholly replace the Equality Act, a proposed civil rights bill that would outlaw LGBTQ+ discrimination. “I’ve introduced these amendments to the so-called ‘Equality’ Act in order to stop this Democrat attack on girls, churches, and believers,” she said in a statement. The proposed changes, which Ms Greene called “America First amendments,” echoing one of former president Trump’s slogans, would entirely replace the bill with one that prevents trans women and girls from participating in women’s sports, exempts churches and other non-profits from the anti-discrimination bill, and, even more broadly, allow people to sue the federal government “if their religious rights are violated.”
Introduced last week, the bicameral Equality Act would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in areas like housing, employment, and education, in the same way racial and sex discrimination is already outlawed at the federal level. The proposed bill would update landmark civil rights laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Fair Housing Act to reflect this broader conception. More than half of states don’t explicitly have discrimination protections on the basis of gender identity and sexuality. “Our nation was founded on the promise that all are created equal and are worthy of dignity and respect, regardless of who they are or whom they love,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement at the time. “With the reintroduction of the Equality Act, Congressional Democrats are making a resounding commitment to this truth: that all Americans must be treated equally under the law, not just in the workplace, but in every place.”
Some prominent Republicans like senator Mitt Romney have voice opposition for the bill as it’s currently constituted, arguing it needs stronger protection for people whose faiths are opposed to same-sex marriage and LGBTQ+ rights. Ms Greene is among them, and she has a history of criticizing and casting doubt on the legitimacy and rights of transgender people as a whole. She did not respond to a request for comment fromThe Independent. In her statement announcing the amendment, Ms Greene said the changes were necessary to stop “biological males”—a derogatory way to refer to trans women—from joining in athletic activities. In early February, she co-sponsored legislation, the Old Glory Only Act, that would ban US embassies from flying the LGBTQ Pride Flag, after the Obama and Trump administrations went back and forth over the practice, with Mr Obama allowing it in 2015 and Mr Trump revoking it in 2019. In January, she co-sponsored a similar bill, the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, seeking to keep trans people out of sports matching their gender identity.
"As a former competitive athlete and a mother to a daughter who is a D1 collegiate athlete, I staunchly oppose biological males in girls/women’s sports, locker rooms, and bathrooms,” Ms Greene said in a statement at the time. “This completely violates women’s rights in every way. Women’s sports should be women’s sports." Prior to being elected, Ms Greene called a drag queen an “abomination,” and essentially declared that all trans people are wrong, once writing on Facebook that, “Trans does not mean gender change, it just means a gender refusal and gender pretending! Truth is truth, it is not a choice!!!”
Under the new administration, LGTBQ+ rights have been a major focus, with president Biden ending the Trump administration’s trans military ban, nominating the first openly transgender official in the history of the federal government to serve in a top health post, and signing an executive order that the federal government should interpret recent Supreme Court precedent to make rules that anti-sex discrimination policies include LGTBQ+ people.
Of course, it doesn't matter what Marj Q thinks, but getting to 60 votes in the Senate to break the filibuster is going to need business and grassroots support. This is moving pretty quickly; if you have a moment to let your Senators know it would be helpful.