The House State Government Committee this week approved a bill that is part of a legislative trend said to stem the tide of illegal immigration, but that lacks protections for LGBTs among its nondiscrimination provisions.
The committee on Tuesday advanced SB 637, proposed by Sen. Kim Ward (R-39th Dist.), which would require public-works contractors and subcontractors to participate in E-Verify, a federal program that allows employers to verify the eligibility status of employees in a national database.
Ward’s measure includes a stipulation that employers cannot use E-Verify to discriminate based on a number of factors, including race, ethnicity, color and national origin.
Pennsylvania Rep. Babette Josephs (D-182nd Dist.) offered an amendment to add sexual orientation and gender identity or expression among the protected classes in SB 637, but Josephs’ motion was voted down.
Josephs opposes the E-Verify legislation but said she offered the amendment after it became clear the measure would pass.
“I figured I would try to make it better if I could,” she said. “No one should ever be discriminated against, so why should we allow an employer or anyone involved in this bad policy decision of E-Verify to discriminate against a group of people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity or expression?”
When the measure comes up for debate on the full floor, Josephs said she plans to again pursue the amendment.
E-Verify authorizes employers to use a free government database to compare their employees’ I-9 forms to government documents to determine if they are eligible to work in the United States.
Josephs likened the measure to Real ID — which would mandate national identification cards for citizens — which she said isn’t likely to gain traction in the Pennsylvania legislature.
“I think the legislature is being schizophrenic because I believe the Senate and the House will both reject Real ID, as a number of states have done, but this is just another form of Real ID,” she said. “It’s a way to get U.S. citizens and everyone here in a database that can have false positives, false negatives, people who have the same name. And in principle, I don’t think we should be subjecting citizens to this kind of privacy invasion.”
The debate over SB 637 was one in a number of recent high-energy debates that have highlighted the large rifts between the parties in the committee and the legislature as a whole.
Josephs called the atmosphere in her committee “contentious” and said committee chair Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R-12th Dist.) recently brought in a security officer to be present for the meetings.
“That doesn’t make for a very collegial atmosphere,” she said.
Josephs surmised that progress is being halted in the state legislature because of the influence of extreme right-wing lawmakers.
“There are people in the Republican caucus who are controlling the agenda, and some more moderate Republicans are going along with it because they’re afraid of a primary. Everybody has primaries but you still have to vote with your principles. I’m disappointed in the more-reasonable Republicans who don’t stand with us on civil rights, LGBT rights or on taking more reasonable steps toward people who are here without documents. So I think we really need to activate ourselves right now — every community, in Philadelphia and all right-thinking people across the state.”