Norton Blasts Palmer for Filing Amendment to Block Local D.C. Anti-Discrimination Law

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today blasted Representative Gary Palmer (R-AL) for filing an amendment to the House's fiscal year 2018 District of Columbia Appropriations bill to block the District from spending its local funds to enforce a local anti-discrimination law, the Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Act (RHNDA), which prohibits employers from discriminating against employees, their spouses and dependents based on their reproductive health decisions. The Rules Committee is expected to consider amendments to the bill after Congress returns from the August recess. Despite repeated attempts to block RHNDA, Norton has been able to preserve this local D.C. law. Last year, the House passed Palmer's same amendment to the fiscal year 2017 D.C. appropriations bill, but Norton kept the provision out of the enacted fiscal year 2017 omnibus appropriations bill. In 2015, the House voted to nullify RHNDA using a disapproval resolution during the congressional review period, the first such vote on a D.C. disapproval resolution in almost 25 years, but the Senate did not take up the bill.

"Ignoring the bedrock Republican principle of local control of local affairs, Representative Palmer is doing the bidding of far-right interest groups to try to block a local D.C. anti-discrimination law, while ignoring work that needs to be done for his own constituents," Norton said. "No matter the local law in our country, no Member of the national legislature, unaccountable to local constituents, has any right to violate the oldest American principle of federalism that confines Congress to national matters alone. No employer has the right to know, much less interfere, with the most private of health decisions of their employees. We have defeated every attempt to block or overturn RHNDA, and we will do it again so that no employees in the District need to fear discrimination based on their personal, reproductive health."

Norton will seek to block the Palmer amendment in the Rules Committee. Norton has filed amendments to strike the four anti-home-rule riders that are currently in the House's fiscal year 2018 D.C. Appropriations bill. Norton's amendments would strike riders that prohibit D.C. from spending its local funds on marijuana commercialization and on abortions for low-income women, as well as those that repeal D.C.'s medical aid-in-dying law, the Death with Dignity Act, and budget autonomy referendum.