House vote reveals right’s strategy to discriminate

For far too long, stigmatized communities have been the targets of discrimination in the workplace and religious intolerance. However, in this new post-Hobby Lobby world, business owners are finding it expedient to hide their bigotry behind empty calls of religious refusals as new laws are sweeping the land codifying business owners’ right to discriminate. And the latest target of this sweep is Washington DC.

A year ago, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision authorized employers to impose their religious beliefs and prejudices on their employees’ healthcare decisions. The ruling was the result of the long-term full court press from equality opponents to restrict rights, including access to abortion and other reproductive health services. Its ripple effect: the use of a warped redefinition of religious liberty to justify expanded discrimination against LGBTQ people and their families.

{mosads}All across the country, local governments regularly debate legislation to protect people in their communities—all people—from harm in their schools, workplaces and community areas. Recently, this fight came to the Washington, D.C. city government.

In December 2014, the D.C. City Council—the democratically and locally elected governing body of the District of Columbia—unanimously voted to prevent discriminatory treatment of employees and LGBTQ students in the District by passing the Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Amendment Act (RHNDA) of 2014 and the Human Rights Amendment Act (HRAA) of 2014.

Bills passed by the D.C. Council are subject to a Congressional review period before they can take effect. The will of the people in D.C. can be struck down by Congressional fiat at any moment. Instead of fulfilling their promise to create economic opportunities and advance personal freedoms, these Congressional politicians are forcing their outdated priorities, without any fear of consequences, on a population that has no avenue for legislative or electoral recourse.  And just last month, anti-choice and anti-equality members of Congress introduced legislation to strike down both of these bills and undercut the equality that they assure, which is important to DC voters.

When the House chose to markup D.C.’s RHNDA, it brought us face-to-face with where the opponents of equality are going in our post Hobby Lobby world. They are willing to force a legislative assault on fundamental issues that progressives feel strongly about — issues that are inextricably linked and are core to delivering true freedom, justice and equality.

While opponents of these measures claim these protections against discrimination restrict the religious liberty of employers, we fundamentally disagree. RHNDA would prohibit employers from penalizing an employee for utilizing reproductive-health care that the employer might oppose – for example, firing a woman for being pregnant and unmarried, for having an abortion, or for using in-vitro fertilization to conceive.  HRAA simply ensures that LGBTQ students have equal access to school facilities and services as is required by DC’s Human Rights Act.

Religious liberty is a cornerstone of our country’s values; however, what was intended to both allow individuals to practice our own religions freely while also protecting our neighbors from having other’s religious beliefs imposed on them is rapidly getting twisted. An employer is free to make their own reproductive choices, but not to make those choices for their employees. This distinction is what separates our country from so many theocratic regimes around the world, where people are routinely oppressed and even killed for making their own personal decisions.   

As we saw this spring in Indiana, there is strong and widespread opposition to using religion as an excuse to harm or discriminate. This principle–that businesses should not be allowed to discriminate against their employees–is why we support laws to ensure that those who work and study in D.C. are treated fairly.

Why should the reproductive rights movement be interested in LGBTQ freedom and equality? Why should the LGBTQ people be interested in reproductive rights and justice?

Several reasons: straight and LGBTQ people use birth control, have abortions and use fertility treatments, and transgender people need access to a full range of health services to be their whole selves. We also recognize that those who move these laws have a united world view that disavows both women’s empowered decisions around our reproductive destiny and LGBTQ people’s empowered decisions about how to build their own families. Finally, straight and LGBTQ people need reproductive rights and justice because our respective legal rights and destinies have long been intertwined through Supreme Court decisions going back over 40 years.  The latest of which was last year’s Hobby Lobby ruling, which then served as the inspiration for Indiana’s recent blanket discrimination law — a law that was so broad that it could have been applied to everyone.

State and local governments across the country have the discretion to decide how to protect their communities from discrimination and D.C. should not be treated differently. Congress, who is in no way accountable to D.C. residents, should not interfere with these unanimously passed local measures.

We stand united with the businesses, organizations and individuals who support these fairness laws and oppose any Congressional actions that would strike down these two human rights laws.

Hogue is president of NARAL-Pro Choice America. Carey is executive director of the National LGBTQ Task Force