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Advocates Hope LGBTQ Protections Will Pass With New Leadership

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The Virginia Values Act, introduced Friday in the General Assembly by Senator Adam Ebbin, would offer extensive (and much needed) non-discrimination protections to Virginia’s LGBTQ citizens.

Sen. Adam Ebbin, D-Alexandria, introduced Friday SB 868, called the “Virginia Values Act,” which would amend existing nondiscrimination laws to extend protections for the state’s LGBTQ residents. While protection from discimination against race, religion, age, and disability, among other demographics, already exist under Virginia law, the proposed bill seeks to include the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.”

Less than half of U.S. states prohibit discrimination for LGBTQ individuals, according to Freedom for All Americans, a nationwide campaign that seeks to provide nondiscrimination protection for LGBTQ individuals. Virginia is among the majority, with no laws protecting the community from wrongful firing or evictions based on discrimination.

Tracey Swinarsky is a transgender advocacy speaker with Equality Virginia, an organization that seeks equality for all LGBTQ individuals. She said she has experienced discrimination from two employers, including one that fired her because of customer complaints because she is transgender.

“If there was a legal thing that says legally you can’t do this, I would’ve taken action,” Swinarsky said.

“The new law will bring Virginia into the 21st century, and into alignment with Virginia voters, by modernizing and expanding existing human rights law,” the Virginia Values Coalition stated in a press release. The coalition formed in October, following the 2019 General Assembly session in which over 20 bills supported by Equality Virginia failed to advance.

SB 868 was referred to the Committee on General Laws and Technology, chaired by Sen. George Barker, D-Fairfax. 

Sen. Adam Ebbin, patron of the bill to prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ. (courtesy of generalassembly.gov)

The proposed protections will directly target discrimination from public and private employers, housing, credit applications and public acommodations. The Virginia Fair Housing Law would include prohibiting eviction or denial of residence on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation. 

Employers with more than five employees will also be prohibited from firing or refusing to hire an individual on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation. It will also be unlawful for employment agencies to refuse to refer an individual for a job on that basis. 

Under the proposed changes, no individual could be legally denied service due to their gender identity or sexual orientation, including in restaurants, stores and public facilities, such as gyms and libraries. This section would not apply to any private club or facility owned by a religious corporation that is not open to the public. 

The bill also proposes including discrimination against sexual orientation or gender identity as qualifying reasons for grievance hearings, which are meetings that address employee allegations of discrimination. 

“It would give us a lot more feeling of safety and security if that happens,” Swinarsky said. “We’re a part of the world and they’re gonna have to deal with that and take care of us and handle us like anybody else out there — no matter what.”

Gov. Ralph Northam included the objectives of this legislation as a priority during his State of the Commonwealth address on Wednesday. 

“Then, we will pass comprehensive protections in employment, housing, and public accommodations for LGBTQ people,” Northam said in his address. “These are important steps toward building a more equal, just, and inclusive state.”

The Virginia Values Coalition worked alongside Ebbin and other partners including Equality Virginia, the Human Rights Campaign, Freedom for All Americans, the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia and the National Center for Transgender Equality to create the legislation. 

Legislators announce support of LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections in 2020 General Assembly. (courtesy of hrc.org)

Virginia is home to over 257,000 LGBTQ adults and over 50,000 LGBTQ youth according to the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. The institute reported that 81 percent of Virginia residents think LGBTQ individuals experience discrimination in the state. It also shows that 74 percent of LGBTQ student respondents have experienced discrimination at school. 

“So we know that discrimination is happening with frequency in Virginia,” said Vee Lamneck, executive director of Equality Virginia, which also conducted its own surveys and reported that about half of its participants experienced discrimination. 

Lamneck stepped into this position just last week after being with the organization for over six years and deputy director for three years. The position was previously held by James Parrish, current director of the VVC. 

“An overwhelming majority of Americans, including Virginians, believe that LGBT people should be protected from discrimination,” Parrish said. “But also a majority of people believe those protections already exist, and they don’t.”

Sen. Ebbin patroned SB 998 last session, which also aimed to prohibit employers from discriminating on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation. It passed the Senate 28-12 but didn’t make it past the first reading in the House. 

“Conservative leadership in the House of Delegates continuously stood in the way,” Parrish said. “The Republican-led Senate passed both the employment bill and the housing bill with a super majority of votes in the past several sessions but they were always dead-on-arrival in the House.”

Equality Virginia and the VVC said they are excited to see new leadership this session that seeks to protect the LGBTQ community.

House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn and Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw, D-Fairfax, already pledged to support legislation that protects the LGBTQ community. 

“Passing comprehensive protections for LGBTQ Virginians will be a top priority for Virginia’s Senate in the upcoming General Assembly Session,” Saslaw stated in a tweet. “It’s long past time to end anti-LGBTQ discrimination in employment, housing, and public spaces.”

A CNS reporter reached out to a third of the Republican senators who voted against the 2019 bill to gauge their thoughts on SB 868, but none responded. Equality Virginia recently reported that 2018 and 2019 surveys found a majority of Virginia Republicans support passing protective legislation. In 2019, 63 percent said they would support protection from discrimination in employment, while 53 percent — a slight decrease from 55 percent in 2018 — said they would support protection in housing.

When Parrish was asked what he would say to opposing legislators, he advised to listen to the facts: a multitude of polls show that the majority of Virginians support protecting LGBTQ individuals from discrimination. 

“LGBTQ people live in every district in this state, so elected leaders should be looking out for all citizens,” Parrish said.

Written by Emma Gauthier, Capital News Service. Top Photo: A rainbow flag was raised on Sept. 23 along with a trans flag and the Philly Pride Flag for Richmond Pride. (Photos from City of Richmond Flickr account)

Virginia LGBTQ Advocates Hoping For Big Gains in General Assembly This Year

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For the first time in over a generation, Democrats control both houses of the General Assembly, and advocates are working to ensure that this has positive results for Virginia’s LGBTQ community.

It hasn’t been all that many years since the dawn of a new General Assembly session meant just as many proposed bills designed to diminish LGBTQ rights and further discrimination against us as bills designed to improve the lives of LGBTQ Virginians. That’s changed in recent years, notably with the ending of Bob Marshall’s term in the House Of Delegates, but continued Republican control of both houses of the General Assembly meant that the many pro-LGBTQ bills that were proposed never made it out of committee.

This week, everything changes. The Democrats are in control not only of the Governor’s Office but both houses of the General Assembly. This is the first time that’s been true since 1993, before many of our readers were born, and it has the potential to make a lot of improvements in the civil rights and legal status of LGBTQ Virginians.

State Senator Jennifer McClellan agrees, and called the Democratic electoral victory a “huge deal” in a recent conversation with Virginia Mercury. McClellan has sponsored SB 66, which would amend the Virginia Fair Housing Deal make it illegal for landlords to refuse to rent to someone on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

“I think that is an area where we would have been able to make some progress had it not been for Republicans in the House who wouldn’t even hear legislation,” McClellan told Virginia Mercury.

Indeed, many of these measures passed in the state Senate in previous sessions, even when it was under Republican control. However, Republican leadership in the House Of Delegates often refused to even hear discussion of pro-LGBTQ bills, either in committees or full sessions of the House. Now, with Democrats in the driver’s seat, LGBTQ advocates see hope on the horizon.

James Parrish. Photo courtesy Equality Virginia.

“There is an opportunity to pass legislation that supports Virginia’s LGBTQ community more broadly than just nondiscrimination protection,” James Parrish told the Virginia Mercury. Parrish, until recently the executive director of Equality Virginia, stepped down on January 1 in order to lead the Virginia Values Coalition, a newly formed pro-LGBTQ advocacy organization bringing together groups like Virginia’s ACLU, Human Rights Campaign, and the National Center for Transgender Equality under a single banner.

Indeed, many issues are on the table for this upcoming session. Currently, only employees for the government and state contractors are protected from firing based on sexual orientation or gender identity — and those employees are only protected in a temporary fashion. One of Ralph Northam’s first acts as governor was to sign an executive order replicating one previously signed by Terry McAuliffe during his gubernatorial administration, protecting LGBTQ state employees from firing. However, if a less LGBTQ-friendly governor were elected in 2021 and decided not to sign a similar executive order, that protection would disappear.

The new Democratic leadership of the General Assembly are certainly in a position to create a more permanent law protecting public employees against discrimination; indeed, SB 159, introduced by Senator Jennifer Boysko, does exactly that. But advocates see an opportunity to protect more than public employees; Parrish told the Virginia Mercury that advocates are hoping for the passage of a bill that protects all LGBTQ employees, public and private. “We anticipate getting a lot of corporate support for it,” Parrish told the Mercury.

SB 23, introduced by Senator Adam Ebbin, would enact exactly this sort of employment protection. Ebbin, one of five LGBTQ members of the General Assembly, says that a positive change like this has been a long time coming.

“It’s a big deal to know that you can’t just be swept aside as a second-class citizen,” he told the Virginia Mercury. “And it’ll matter. There’s a lot of people older than me who thought this kind of environment would never come.”

Senator Adam Ebbin. Photo By EbbinForVirginia, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia

Another big push from advocates is to ban conversion therapy in Virginia. While the Virginia Board of Psychology and multiple other state agencies within the Department of Health Professions have released guidance stating that conversion therapy is considered a violation of standard practice, it is still technically legal within the state. Both Richmond and Virginia Beach’s City Councils have passed resolutions asking the General Assembly to ban the practice, and Senator Scott Surovell, who has been attempting to pass a ban for multiple previous sessions, has introduced SB 245 in hopes of doing exactly that. A similar bill in the House Of Delegates, HB 386, has been proposed by Delegate Patrick Hope.

There are other issues on the table as well; bills in both the House and Senate would require the Department of Education to create a statewide policy determining how Virginia’s schools would interact with transgender students. Both bills mandate “a safe and supportive learning environment free from discrimination and harassment for all students.” Bills introduced in the House and Senate also add sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as disability, to the list of classes protected by hate crime legislation.

Multiple bills and resolutions in the Senate attempt to remove the Marshall-Newman Amendment, the 2006 amendment to Virginia’s Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman, from the constitution. While this may seem strictly symbolic now, the Supreme Court’s more conservative shift in recent years, with the addition of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, leave some concerned that federal protections for marriage equality, currently protected only by Supreme Court precedent, may be challenged in the near future.

If the Supreme Court overruled its previous decision in the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges case, Virginia’s Constitution might once again become the top legal authority on marriage within the Commonwealth. If the Marshall-Newman Amendment remained on the books in such an event, all same-sex marriages within Virginia would immediately lose government recognition. This isn’t an outcome anyone wants, and therefore the passage of bills like Senator John Edwards’ SB 39, which repeals the Marshall-Newman Amendment, are more important than some might think at first.

While not all of the pro-LGBTQ bills currently facing the General Assembly will necessarily pass, it seems likely that the overall legal picture for LGBTQ Virginians will be considerably brighter by the end of the 2020 General Assembly session. And that’s a wonderful thing.

“We’ve come forward. We’re not going back,” Ebbin told the Virginia Mercury. “And I think there’s momentum to bring us to where we should and need to be.”

Top Photo By Varmin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia

New Coalition Calls on Lawmakers to Support LGBTQ Equal Rights

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With the new Virginia Values Coalition, Equality Virginia has created a statewide advocacy group to demand laws protecting LGBTQ rights in Virginia.

Bianca Rey, chair of Capital Trans Pride, understands firsthand the struggle to live with equal protections. The constant worries of being fired from a job or treated differently are thoughts individuals in the LGBTQ community deal with on a regular basis, Rey said. “Is today going to be the day where somebody is going to approach me and tell me, you can’t come to this coffee shop anymore and buy coffee, because you’re trans, or gay, or you’re bi?” 

Rey, a Virginia resident, said she feels fortunate to live near the D.C metro area, where resources are easily accessible for the LGBTQ community. Still, Virginia is one of 30 states in the country without specific laws to protect LGBTQ residents. 

“We’re professionals, we’re teachers, we’re veterans, we work in healthcare, we’re physicians,” Rey said. But, she said, the LGBTQ community worries about access in a way the straight community doesn’t.

“I think, as a state, our top priority is to legalize a policy where LGBTQ Virginians are free to work and not be discriminated for being who they are,” she said.

That is why advocacy group Equality Virginia recently formed the Virginia Values Coalition, which is calling on state lawmakers to establish legal protections for the LGBTQ community from employment and housing to public spaces like stores or restaurants. 

“We hope to arrive at the General Assembly with thousands of people behind us,” said James Parrish, executive director of Equality Virginia. 

Last February, the group pushed for several bills to end discrimination in work and housing that did not make it past Republican-led House sub-committees:

  • Senate Bill 998 and House Bill 2067: Both aimed to prohibit employers from discriminating based on sexual orientation or gender identity. SB 998 passed the Senate but not the House. HB 2067 died in committee.
  • SB 1109 and HB 2677 both aimed to make discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity an unlawful discriminatory housing practice. SB 1109 passed the Senate but not the House. HB 2677 died in committee. 

Sen. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, supported legislation to protect Virginia’s LGBTQ community. McClellan said she plans to reintroduce the housing bill in the upcoming General Assembly session.

“I plan to reintroduce my housing discrimination bill in 2020 and if Sen. [Adam] Ebbin reintroduces his, I will once again be a co-patron,” she said. “Virginia’s LGBTQ citizens have the right to fair housing and fair employment, and if Democrats have the majority, we will finally be able to push the needle forward on many of these protections.”

Over 20 other bills supported by Equality Virginia failed to advance in the 2019 General Assembly session.

Parrish said last year was his 10th session lobbying for a housing bill and the first time the General Assembly had not allowed the coalition’s priority bills to be voted on before the House.

“We had the votes necessary both in the committee and on the floor for the housing bill, and they would not let it come up for votes,” he said.

Republicans hold a slim majority in the state legislature — 51-49 in the House and 21-19 in the Senate. Advocates for a number of causes believe that flipping control of the General Assembly could impact the policies and legislation being passed.

Equality Virginia Executive Director James Parrish. Photo by Michael Key, via VCU CNS

Right now, the Virginia Values Coalition field team is signing up people who support LGBTQ non-discrimination protections. Later in the year, it will host events highlighting individuals and organizations who join the coalition.

The coalition also will host panels across the state to educate people on the challenges transgender people face and how Virginians can support the community. 

Equality Virginia also has two programs to get business owners and elected officials to demonstrate their support for LGBTQ nondiscrimination legislation: 

  • Equality Means Business, which allows any small business owner to pledge online that their establishment does not discriminate against employees, customers and clients based on sexual orientation or gender identity. 
  • Local Leaders for Fairness, which enables elected officials to state their support of the General Assembly passing nondiscrimination protections for the LGBTQ community related to employment, housing and public spaces. 

Currently, 24 districts and 46 elected Virginia officials have signed the online statement.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday on three employment discrimination cases. Arguments in the cases asked if Title VII protections extend to gay, lesbian and transgender employees. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bans discrimination on the “basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.”

The case could be significant because fewer than half of the nation’s 50 states have laws in place that prohibit discrimination based on gender and sexual identities, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

Written by Aliviah Jones, Capital News Service. Top Photo via VCU CNS