Following the historic U.S. Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality, local state lawmakers are gearing up to introduce legislation to ban discrimination against LGBT people — with such a bill possibly coming in the next few days.
Gabe Spece, chief of staff for lead House sponsor Rep. Dan Frankel (D-23rd Dist.), said House Bill 300 would be ready for introduction soon.
“We’ve been working closely with advocates and stakeholders to get the bill ready to go and we hope to introduce it very soon,” Spece said.
Lawmakers in the Pennsylvania House and Senate are coordinating efforts to introduce near-identical legislation as early as this week.
“We are working with our co-prime sponsors in the Senate and also our counterparts over in the House to get something out possibly within the week,” said Sally Keaveney, chief of staff for lead Senate sponsor Sen. Larry Farnese (D-First Dist.).
Pennsylvania is one of 32 states that lacks a statewide law banning discrimination against LGBT people. Lawmakers have submitted a bill to add sexual orientation to the list of classes protected from discrimination, such as race and religion, for the past several sessions, but it has failed to gain traction.
Farnese announced after the SCOTUS ruling that he was readying the measure for introduction.
“Currently under Pennsylvania law, it is still permitted to deny someone a service or a job based on the way they live their private lives,” Farnese said in a statement. “As the highest court in the land finally opens the door to same-sex marriage, we must move decisively to ensure that no Pennsylvanian — and no one who visits the Commonwealth — is ever subjected to bigotry or intolerance because of who they are as people.”
Frankel also commented on the relation between marriage equality and nondiscrimination.
“We must not lose sight that it remains legal to deny our family, friends and neighbors jobs, housing or a public accommodation such as a restaurant table because of who they are,” he said. “That is wrong, is un-American and about 70 percent of Pennsylvanians have agreed for years that we need laws against that type of discrimination.”
Keaveney said backers have been working on selling the economic benefits of inclusion to Republicans.
“We’ve been working over the last several years to get some support from the other side of the aisle, trying to get them to look at the economic-development benefits of LGBT inclusion,” Keaveney said. “We haven’t finalized the language yet, but we are close to pulling together a bill that hits all the marks. We want this done sooner rather than later.”