KPCC Covers Brouhaha Over ENDA

Larry Mantle, a talk show host on one of my local NPR stations, KPCC 89.3 FM, aired a segment on Wednesday's Air Talk devoted to the brouhaha about the substitute ENDA bill. He talked with U.S. Rep. Linda Sanchez and Legal Director of Lambda Legal, Jon Davidson about Barney Frank's stripped-down version of ENDA, H.R. 3685. Davidson emphasised the first two points which Lambda has been trumpeting in its newly released legal analysis of the amended bill:

As a point of clarity for the community: The recent version is not simply the old version with the transgender protections stripped out —but rather has modified the old version in several additional and troubling ways.

In addition to the missing vital protections for transgender people on the job, this new bill also leaves out a key element to protect any employee, including lesbians, gay men and bisexuals who may not conform to their employer's idea of how a man or woman should look and act. This is a huge loophole through which employers sued for sexual orientation discrimination can claim that their conduct was actually based on gender expression, a type of discrimination that the new bill does not prohibit.

This version of ENDA states without qualification that refusal by employers to extend health insurance benefits to the domestic partners of their employees that are provided only to married couples cannot be considered sexual orientation discrimination. The old version at least provided that states and local governments could require that employees be provided domestic partner health insurance when such benefits are provided to spouses.

In the previous version of ENDA the religious exemptions had some limitations. The new version has a blanket exemption under which, for example, hospitals or universities run by faith-based groups can fire or refuse to hire people they think might be gay, lesbian or bisexual.

Lorri Jean, CEO of the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center, called in to the show and made the point that H.R. 3685, as opposed to the original bill H.R. 2015, has expanded the exemption to a near-blanket exemption for businesses run by religious organizations (such as schools, hospitals etc) and also includes a new measure which states that failure by businesses to not extend benefits to same-sex domestic partners is NOT discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

One of the callers who called in had intended to support the substitute bill but changed his mind when he heard that the new bill is not just about kicking transgenders to the curb but is also substantially weaker than the original ENDA.

Another caller called in an said that since the transgender community is such a smaller community than the LGB community a bill should be passed to protect the larger community first. Davidson made the point that transgenders although a smaller numerical population face much higher rates of emplyment discrimination, and in fact, employment discrimination increases with the level of gender non-conformity the employer perceives and since the substitute bill doesn't cover gender non-conformity at all it does not provide protection for many people of any sexual orientation.

Excellent, topical show, as usual