Tag: non discrimination ordinance

New Idaho bill would ban cities from banning LGBTQ+ discrimination

Read more at News from the States.

Under a new bill introduced Wednesday, the Idaho Legislature would ban local policies in more than a dozen cities that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

The bill, written by the Idaho Family Policy Center, a conservative Christian group, and sponsored by Nampa Republican state Rep. Bruce Skaug, would block local governments in Idaho from having more strict antidiscrimination policies than established in state law. 

Skaug argued that the varying local rules hinder economic growth.

“In addition to threatening our religious freedoms, all of these conflicting local antidiscrimination ordinances create a tangled web of red tape that varies from city to city, county to county,” Skaug told lawmakers. “In the business sector, it burdens the entrepreneurs and the employers.”

The bill comes after more than a decade of failed efforts in the Idaho Legislature to add LGBTQ+ discrimination protections to state law. 

Since 2011, 13 Idaho cities and towns have passed nondiscrimination ordinances including Sandpoint, Boise, Idaho Falls, Moscow, Lewiston, Meridian, Ketchum, Hailey, Bellevue, Driggs, Victor, Pocatello and Coeur d’Alene. In 2020, Ada County, home to Boise, passed its own, KTVB reported. 

Chelsea Gaona-Lincoln, executive director of Add the Words Idaho, a group that has pushed for LGBTQ+ antidiscrimination protections, called the bill embarrassing.

“There are real issues Idaho needs addressed,” she said in a statement. “Lawmakers should move on and find something meaningful and responsible to do with the time and taxpayers’ money. Let queer and trans people live in peace.” 

Idaho Family Policy Center, which wrote the bill, echoed Skaug’s arguments

The Idaho House Local Government Committee voted to introduce Skaug’s bill Wednesday, teeing it up for a full committee hearing with public testimony. All 14 Republicans on the committee supported introducing it, and the committee’s two Democrats opposed it.

Rep. Steve Berch, a Boise Democrat, called the bill “an overreach of legislative power or state power over the cities and communities.”

Skaug told the committee that the bill would ban more than just local antidiscrimination policies for LGBTQ+ protections, saying it would also prevent housing-related measures that deal with income and familial status. In an interview after the committee hearing, Skaug couldn’t immediately share which localities have those other nondiscrimination measures. 

In preparing the bill, Skaug told the Idaho Capital Sun that he worked with the Idaho Family Policy Center and the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group. 

In a statement, Idaho Family Policy Center President Blaine Conzatti said local antidiscrimination ordinances “are frequently weaponized against small business owners — especially wedding vendors or those offering creative design services.”

“No small business owner should ever be forced to choose between violating their sincerely held religious beliefs or leaving the marketplace altogether,” he said. “… Government officials have forced bakers, photographers, florists, graphic designers, and wedding venue operators to participate in same-sex wedding ceremonies and pride festivals.”

Planned Parenthood critiques bill as stripping local control

Rep. Marco Erickson, an Idaho Falls Republican, made the motion to introduce the bill in committee. 

In 2013, the Idaho Falls City Council first passed an ordinance barring LGBTQ+ discrimination in housing and employment, becoming the seventh Idaho town with such protections at the time, Boise State Public Radio reported. In 2020, the Idaho Falls City Council expanded the discrimination protections to public accommodations, the Post Register reported. 

In a statement, Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates’ Idaho State Director Mistie DelliCarpini-Tolman critiqued the bill as stripping local control.

“In places across Idaho, locally elected officials are ready and willing to stop discrimination, and this bill blocks them from doing exactly that, what voters elected them to do,” Tolman said. “That isn’t small government. It’s a uniform denial of basic protections that tells LGBTQ+ Idahoans and other marginalized residents that their safety and dignity don’t matter.”

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Arlington TX considers ending LGBTQ protections in anti-discrimination ordinance

Read more at the Fort Worth Star Telegram. *This is a developing story

The Arlington City Council will consider removing protections for LGBTQ+ residents Tuesday as part of the changes to its anti-discrimination ordinance. In early September, the City Council voted to temporarily suspend the anti-discrimination ordinance until city staff could propose amendments to it removing specific diversity, equity and inclusion language. Had this not taken place, the city would be at risk of losing $65 million in federal grant money.

Tuesday night, the council will be presented with an edited anti-discrimination clause. The changes include deleting “Gender Identity and Expression” and “Sexual Orientation” from the definition of discrimination. But a leader in the LGBTQ+ community said the proposed change leaves a class of residents without local protections. Previously, the ordinance said discrimination is “any direct or indirect exclusion, distinction, segregation, limitation, refusal, denial, or other differentiation in the treatment of a person or persons because of a race, color, national origin, age, religion, sex, disability, sexual orientation or gender identity.”

If the council approves the amendments Tuesday, anyone experiencing discrimination due to their sexual orientation or gender identity will not be able to look to the city for help. DeeJay Johannessen, CEO of the HELP Center for LGBT Health and Wellness, said this is not necessary to keep grant funding. “Out of the 395 cities with sexual orientation, gender identity in their list of protected classes, not one other city is doing it,” Johannessen said. “In fact, historically, no city has ever removed sexual orientation from their list of protected classes. So Arlington would be the first.” When a municipality receives grants from the U.S. government, it enters into a contract with various stipulations on the allocation of those funds. Those contracts have been updated since President Donald Trump took office to prohibit “advancing or promoting DEI” in decision-making, City Manager Trey Yelverton said at the Sept. 2 meeting. In Fort Worth, the City Council voted to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs to protect federal funding in August. The city code still includes sexual orientation, transgender, gender identity or gender expression as protected classes from discrimination. Sana Syed, a spokesperson for the city of Fort Worth, said due to how the ordinance was written, “no changes were needed to adhere to new federal requirements and none are planned at this time.”

An attorney who Johannessen consulted with regarding Arlington’s proposed anti-discrimination code changes said removing sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression as protected characteristics from the current ordinance “reflects a fundamental and profound misunderstanding of the law. “The inclusion of ‘gender expression’ in this list is somewhat telling, since the term does not appear in the Current Ordinance,” Daniel Barrett, the Fort Worth lawyer Johannessen consulted, wrote in a statement. “Its inclusion exposes the staff’s analysis of the situation as sloppy or, perhaps, based upon something other than legal considerations.” Under the original ordinance, if someone is made to leave an establishment because of their gender identity or sexual orientation, they could go to the city and file a complaint. With the exclusion of those kinds of discrimination in the amended ordinance, the only way to rectify the issue would be through the federal government, Johannessen said. Johannessen was part of the focus group who helped make gender identity and sexual orientation protected classes in Arlington’s anti-discrimination chapter in 2021. “It passed unanimously, and there was not even any public comment voting against it,” Johannessen said. “It sailed through. So that’s why it’s so surprising now that there’s so little push back about having to make this change, even if it was required for them to make this change, there’s no angst about it.”

The City Council will vote on the amendments at the 6:30 p.m. meeting on Tuesday.

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