Less Than Half Of Us Workers Are Protected From Anti-LGBT Discrimination Under State Law
By Guest Blogger on Oct 18, 2012 at 2:35 pm
Our guest blogger is Crosby Burns, Research Associate for LGBT Progress at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2012/10/18/1042061/less-than-half-of-us-workers-are-protected-from-anti-lgbt-discrimination-under-state-law/More than half of US workers in today's labor force work in a state where it remains perfectly legal under state law to fire someone for being gay or transgender, according to new research from the Center for American Progress.
Congress has yet to pass a law making it illegal to fire workers for being gay or transgender. Congress must pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) to ensure that all workers in all states have statutory protections from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
Until then, what remains is a patchwork of state laws that afford legal protections to gay and transgender workers in some states, and others that offer none at all. 21 states and the District of Columbia currently have laws that outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, 16 of which do so on the basis of gender identity.
The Center for American Progress breaks down the numbers that underscore the need for federal legislation to help combat employment discrimination against this vulnerable population:
