Norton Former EEOC Chair Casts Floor Vote for Job Discrimination Protections for Gays (11/7/07)

Norton Former EEOC Chair Casts Floor Vote for Job Discrimination Protections for Gays
November 7, 2007

Washington, DC-Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today cast her first vote in favor of the rights of gay Americans in the Committee of the Whole as the House passed H.R. 3685, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), to prohibit workplace discrimination against gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) Americans, but she was disappointed that the bill did not include an amendment to protect transgender persons. Norton would have voted for the amendment by Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) in the Committee of the Whole on the House floor if it had been was considered, but Baldwin withdrew the amendment. Norton said that she understood that the votes weren't there, but "it is a tragedy to leave the door open to continuing cruel treatment of transgender people, the most victimized members of the gay and lesbian community today." Norton cited "poignant first hand accounts of unbearable misery experienced by children living with mismatched sexual identity." The Congresswoman voted for an amendment by Rep. George Miller (D-CA), Chair of the Education and Labor Committee, to clarify that religious organizations and schools that are already exempt under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act are also exempt under ENDA, wiping away the pretext of radical religious right, anti-gay zealots.

Norton said, "Much too much discrimination against minorities and women remains, but today the epicenter of the most overt, deliberate, and unapologetic discrimination occurs against the GLBT community, and especially transgender people, without any remorse that this discrimination is wrong. That 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies now include sexual orientation in job discrimination policies, speaks to how ENDA is long overdue. It is time to engage other employers as well, as the law long has done with minorities and women."

ENDA authorizes the same enforcement powers, procedures and remedies that exist under current federal employment discrimination laws such as Title VII and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Norton, who enforced Title VII as chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) under President Jimmy Carter, said the EEOC has the expertise to expand into this area just as it has and did with the Americans with Disabilities Act.