Norton Says She Believes She Can Stop Republican Bill Targeting D.C.’s LGBTQ Community in the Senate if it Passes House

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee (OGR) hearing on an anti-LGBTQ bill, the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), protested bitterly that the bill “classified the District of Columbia as part of the federal government in order to nullify D.C.’s strong anti-discrimination laws and promote discrimination against D.C.’s LGBTQ residents.” Norton said that FADA, which does not apply to the states, could effectively gut D.C.’s LGBTQ anti-discrimination law by not only prohibiting the D.C. government from enforcing the law, but could also be read to prohibit private citizens from enforcing it, too, either by stripping courts of their authority to impose penalties or by allowing defendants in private civil suits to raise FADA as a defense. FADA prohibits the federal and District governments from denying benefits, contracts and the like to individuals, non-profits and for-profits that discriminate against LGBT people, as well as individuals who engage in extramarital relations, based on a sincerely-held religious belief or moral conviction.

“For the D.C. residents of every sexual orientation I represent, I am deeply offended by the dual attack in the so-called the First Amendment Defense Act, because it is both an attack on our own LGBTQ community, whose rights our city has gone far in protecting, as well as an attack on the sovereignty of the District of Columbia itself, essentially downgrading the District to an actual colony in spite of the Home Rule Act,” Norton said. “Republicans went out of their way to rewrite this bill, which uses religion and personal scruples to turn the District’s anti-discrimination law on its head. We are proud of D.C.’s local LGBTQ laws that go above and beyond federal laws to ensure no resident endures discrimination in the private and public sectors. FADA tramples over our laws in order to promote discrimination. If House Republicans bring this bigotry to the floor and pass it, I am optimistic that we can stop it in the Senate.”