PrideSource.com – by Gwendolyn Ann Smith
The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (H.R. 2015) is fast approaching its next moment in the sun, as a vote for ENDA may well take place by the time you read this column. The bill, as it currently stands, should provide protections for all lesbian, gay, bisexual and, yes, transgender people in the United States. One may, of course, argue over the language of the bill, and whether or not it goes far enough.
There’s been plenty of history about the transgender protections under ENDA, and I know that it is still the stuff of controversy today. I’ve been following the issues surrounding this bill since 1994, back in the days when the Human Rights Campaign was still the HRCF, and transgender activists were told to sit tight while that version of ENDA went through, and transgender people would be picked up at some later point.
Likewise, I’ve also heard that transgender people need not worry, that our protections already exist in Federal law. Every so often, a glimmer of hope that this may well be true will crop up. Not so this week, as the the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling that states, essentially, that transsexuals do not have any such protections at the federal level.