Two pieces of legislation to bolster rights for LGBT individuals were reintroduced to Congress last week.
The Senate saw the submission of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act Thursday, the same day that an immigration-rights bill was filed in both chambers of Congress.
Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) reintroduced the Senate version of ENDA along with 39 cosponsors, a week after out Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) submitted his version of the measure. ENDA would extend federal employment discrimination protections to include sexual orientation and gender identity.
Democratic Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey signed on to the bill.
Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) submitted the Uniting American Families along with 100 cosponsors, while Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-Vt.) companion bill had 18.
UAFA would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to allow LGBT Americans to sponsor a foreign-born permanent partner for immigration to the United States, a right currently only given to heterosexual married couples. Same-sex couples who are legally married in the United States are still ineligible for the marriage provision because the Defense of Marriage Act prevents the federal government from recognizing such unions.
The immigration law briefly came into question in recent weeks after the Obama administration dropped its legal backing of DOMA but immigration officials summarily reinstated deportation cases, as DOMA is still being enforced.
In a letter sent to Attorney General Eric Holder and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano last week, a coalition of 47 lawmakers urged the administration to hold in abeyance immigration petitions by same-sex married couples until the constitutionality of DOMA is settled in court.
Census data has found that about 36,000 gay and lesbian Americans are in binational same-sex relationships.
“Today, thousands of committed same-sex couples are needlessly suffering because of unequal treatment under our immigration laws, and this is an outrage,” Nadler said last Thursday. “Our Constitution guarantees that no class of people will be singled out for differential treatment — and LGBT Americans should not and must not be excluded from that guarantee.”
Nadler has introduced a form of UAFA in the House in every session since 2000, with Leahy spearheading a Senate measure since 2003. The bill has died in committee each session.
ENDA has also been stalled in Congress for a number of years. The bill saw its most progress — House approval — in 2007 when the gender-identity protections were dropped, but that version went on to die in the Senate. Subsequent versions, as well as the current measure, are trans-inclusive.
Currently, 21 states and Washington, D.C., ban employment discrimination based on sexual orientation, with just 12 states and D.C. extending those protections to include gender identity.
Pennsylvania lacks any LGBT discrimination protections, although a measure to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing and public accommodations was recently introduced in the Senate.
Jen Colletta can be reached at [email protected].