LGBT Texans face double the national discrimination rate. Pass the Equality Act.
By Brad Sears in the Houston Chronicle
With the country shut down from COVID 19, one bright spot during summer 2020 was the Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects LGBT people from workplace discrimination. This past spring, a Texas appellate court followed suit in interpreting Texas state law. But neither these decisions nor workplaces rallying together to face the pandemic slowed the pace of discrimination against LGBT workers.
For this, all Americans, and especially Texans, need the Equality Act to pass the U.S. Senate. The Equality Act would amend existing federal civil rights legislation, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to prohibit discrimination against LGBT people in all areas of public life including employment, housing, education, government services, public accommodations, and credit.
A national survey by the Williams Institute conducted in May 2021 found that nearly one in ten LGBT employees of the 935 participants in the study report experiencing discrimination because of their LGBT status during the past year. Things appear worse for LGBT employees in Texas: respondents were nearly twice as likely (18.5 percent) to report discrimination in the past year.
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