New York City Laws. Read the Report. Read More. Read an Overview. Twenty-one states nationwide have passed state laws that explicitly prohibit employment and housing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. An additional state Wisconsin has a state law that prohibits discrimination due to sexual orientation only. Employment discrimination is also prohibited in the U. This does not extend to protection against housing discrimination in these territories.
Public accommodation non-discrimination laws protect the rights of LGBT people from being refused service or discriminated against in public places on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Nondiscrimination laws prohibiting this type of discrimination have been passed in 20 states and D.
There are no laws explicitly prohibiting this type of discrimination in 27 states and five U. Fourteen states have state laws protecting the rights of LGBT people from being denied credit and lending services on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. There are no such laws passed in D.
S territories. Discriminatory protections for LGBTQ state employees are provided through explicit coverage in public employment nondiscrimination policies in 31 states and three U.
An additional three states and one U. These rulings do not apply to private employers. As of July , 37 states do not expressly prohibit health insurance discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The state of New Jersey prohibits this type of discrimination on the basis of gender identity only. Only 19 states and D. Twenty-two states have no policy on transgender health coverage, and 10 states expressly exclude it.
However, as of , the last provision section of the ACA has been challenged in eight states in an attempted rollback. Rollbacks on a federal prohibition against sex discrimination in healthcare settings leave transgender individuals particularly vulnerable, as this creates further confusion and adds greater heat to the controversial, if essential, national discussion on LGBTQ rights. State, local, and company-level laws and policies on discriminating against LGBTQ people change frequently, and it can be difficult for the average person to keep track.
Attorneys who work in discrimination law have a responsibility to remain up-to-date on these laws and other legal protections for marginalized populations such as the LGBTQ community. Speaking to an attorney about an incident of discrimination due to your gender or sexual orientation is the most effective way to learn your rights and options for legal recourse. Collect any information you can about the discriminatory conduct.
If you experienced workplace discrimination, for instance, see if you can get witness testimony from anyone else who may have witnessed the incident. Other information to document, depending on the type of discrimination and the nature of the incident, may include:.
The religious exemptions that have been considered or enacted by state legislatures take different forms. Some are comprehensive, providing blanket protection for entities that do not wish to provide various services to LGBT people because of their religious or moral beliefs. Others are more narrowly circumscribed, focusing particularly on adoption and foster care services and physical and mental healthcare services.
Few of the states that have enacted these laws have protections in place that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. In this context, these laws function first and foremost as a license to discriminate, signaling that discrimination against LGBT people is acceptable in the state.
The framing and scope of these exemption laws differ in many respects, but are alike in several fundamental ways. First, they are motivated to a large degree by hostility to recent advances in LGBT equality; on their face they invoke only a concern for religious liberty but the public debate around and legislative history of many of these laws show quite clearly the animus and the discriminatory intent that underpin them.
Second, they permit blatantly discriminatory practices without clear limitations or meaningful safeguards. They do not strike a careful balance—or even suggest that any serious attempt was made to do so—between religious exercise and the purposes of the underlying law from which the exemption is carved out, a feature of rights-respecting approaches to religious exemptions.
Third, they often show no regard whatsoever for the harms that the discrimination they legitimize might inflict on those who are turned away from a range of important services and for the nondiscrimination principle itself. These laws are directly harmful, and they take on added importance because of the larger message they send. By enacting these laws, states send a clear signal that discrimination against LGBT people is permissible—and that message has serious consequences at a time when discrimination against LGBT people remains all too common in the United States.
Proponents of exemptions that allow for anti-LGBT discrimination have framed them in terms of religious liberty, foregrounding how these laws might exempt businesses and service providers from laws and regulations that they find objectionable.
The assumption seems to be that the resulting harms to LGBT individuals, or to the core value of equality, are insubstantial. As detailed below, however, the exemptions come at a high price. To understand the harm, it is important to look at the larger context in which such laws are being considered, including pre-existing anti-LGBT discrimination and how exemption laws can encourage such discrimination, particularly in states without nondiscrimination protections.
Anti-LGBT religious exemption laws are likely to exacerbate mistreatment because, both on their face and in the political discourse that surrounds them, they tend to legitimize and signal official acceptance of discrimination against LGBT people.
Already, LGBT people often face discrimination by service providers who deny them goods and services. Where discrimination against LGBT people is permitted, because nondiscrimination laws do not exist, these problems tend to be worse.
The following pages describe the tangible, human impact of such discrimination—which will likely worsen as a result of religious exemption laws—on the people who bear the brunt of it. Leiana C. After the incident, Leiana and her wife gave up on the process for more than a year, fearing similar treatment from other providers.
It was not until a lesbian friend recommended a doctor whose services she had used that they decided to try again. The couple are now the parents of a three-year-old, and Leiana is pregnant with their second child.
Tanya P. At the time, her daughter was already obtaining that treatment, had socially transitioned, and was seeing a therapist. Nonetheless, her pediatrician refused to provide a letter stating that information, citing his religious beliefs:. One pediatrician in Alabama recounted various difficulties that patients had encountered with providers who refuse care on religious grounds.
LGBT individuals have also experienced religious refusals in child welfare services. The suit was filed after two sets of prospective parents—Kristy and Dana Dumont and Erin and Rebecca Busk-Sutton—contacted religiously affiliated agencies in the state about adopting children from foster care and were informed the agencies did not work with same-sex couples.
While many religious exemptions focus on healthcare or child welfare services, religious objections have motivated discriminatory refusals in a wide range of contexts. In a lawsuit filed in , for example, Jack Zawadski sued a Mississippi funeral home for breach of contract and emotional distress, alleging that the home had agreed to transport and cremate the body of his late husband, Robert Huskey, only to renege on the verbal contract when it found out they were a same-sex couple.
When LGBT people are refused service, this discrimination has material and psychological consequences. Some individuals will obtain the good or service they sought, but will face additional costs: finding an alternative provider can require time, energy, and money, which can prove discouraging or even prohibitive.
In an interview with Human Rights Watch, one same-sex couple noted that they had been turned away from three different foster care agencies because of their sexual orientation. In , the couple had applied to an agency in Texas, which responded in an email that they would not work with them and that the couple was not a good fit for the agency.
In , the couple applied to another agency in Texas, which approved their paperwork and scheduled a home visit. Upon meeting the couple in person and realizing that they were a same-sex couple, the caseworker terminated the home visit after five minutes and notified them the agency did not work with same-sex couples. In the hopes of starting a family elsewhere, one of the men accepted a job in Tennessee. Upon arriving in the state, they applied to a third agency that would work with them but would not place boys in their care, saying that the couple could not provide a sufficiently masculine influence.
In their fourth attempt, the couple found an agency that worked with same-sex couples, and is in the process of adopting two siblings who have thrived under their care as foster children. Refusals create barriers to accessing mental and physical healthcare as well.
Persephone Webb, an activist in Tennessee, noted:. The lack of access can be particularly acute in rural areas. In rural East Tennessee, one transgender woman described trying for years to find access to therapy and hormones, eventually ordering hormones online rather than obtaining them from a medical provider. When she was ultimately able to obtain access to care, it was by traveling to a clinic in Asheville, NC, more than an hour away from her home.
Rhonda L. Other individuals simply will not obtain the service at all, forgoing whatever they needed because of the rejection. One lesbian woman in Mississippi recalled that, after their first son was born, she and her partner returned to the OB-GYN they had worked with to discuss having a second child. To their surprise, the OB-GYN burst into tears, and informed them that the practice had instituted a policy after the previous insemination stating they would no longer be inseminating couples who were not married.
At the time, same-sex couples could not marry in Mississippi, and the couple did not know of other providers who would assist with the procedure. But somehow it does not work out that way in states like Florida and Arkansas, which ban gays and lesbians from adopting and being foster parents, respectively. By challenging the discriminatory policies of these states, the ACLU is working hard to prevent similar policies from being adopted in other parts of the country.
As the Supreme Court explained in Romer v. Evans, there is nothing "special" about laws which prevent people from losing jobs and homes because of who they are. Most of us take the right to participate in daily life on an equal footing for granted, the Court said, either because we already have the right under the law, or because we are not subjected to that kind of discrimination.
Laws which prohibit discrimination simply give LGBT people that basic right to be equal participants in the communities in which they live.
Most Americans do not realize that many LGBT people who face discrimination - in areas from housing and employment to parenting - have no legal recourse since federal law does not prohibit discrimination against LGBT people. Yes, twelve states California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Nevada, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin , the District of Columbia, many municipalities, and hundreds of businesses and universities have enacted laws that protect gay, lesbian and bisexual people from employment discrimination.
A smaller number of jurisdictions protect transgender people. But in most locales in the remaining 38 states discrimination against LGBT people remains perfectly legal.
Businesses openly fire LGBT employees, and every year, lesbian and gay Americans are denied jobs and access to housing, hotels and other public accommodations. Many more are forced to hide their lives, deny their families and lie about their loved ones just to get by.
The ACLU believes the best way to redress discrimination is to amend all existing federal, state and local civil rights laws and all existing business and university policies to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation.
They give official status to same-sex couples who register with the city. Scores of government and private companies recognize the domestic partnerships of their employees. The state of Hawaii recognizes domestic partners. While these laws do not confer most of the rights and responsibilities of marriage, they generally grant partners some of the recognition accorded to married couples - typically, the right to visit a sick or dying partner in a hospital, sometimes sick and bereavement leave and in a few cases, health insurance and other important benefits.
Perhaps as important, these policies give some small acknowledgement to the intimate, committed relationships central to the lives of so many lesbians and gay men, which society otherwise ignores. Denying lesbian and gay couples the right to wed not only deprives them of the social and spiritual significance of marriage; it has serious, often tragic, practical consequences.
Since they can not marry, the partners of lesbians and gay men are not next of kin in times of crisis; they are not consulted on crucial medical decisions; they are not given leave to care for each other; they are not each other's legal heirs, if, like most Americans, they do not have wills. Marital status is often the basis on which employers extend health insurance, pension and other benefits. The ACLU believes that since we have attached such enormous social consequences to marriage, it violates equal protection of the law to deny lesbian and gay couples the right to wed.
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