GayWired.com – By Bryan Ochalla
A preliminary assessment of the revised version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (EDNA), set to go before the House Education and Labor committee on Tuesday, shows the bill to be riddled with loopholes in addition to failing altogether to protect transgender people against discrimination, New York-based Lambda Legal declared earlier today.
According to Lambda Legal Executive Director Kevin Cathcart, the current version of EDNA?split late last week by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) into two bills, one covering gays, lesbians and bisexuals and another covering transgendered people?is not simply the old version with the transgender protections stripped out. Instead, he said in a statement released this morning, the old version has been ?modified in several additional and troubling ways.
?In addition to the missing vital protections for transgender people on the job, this new bill also leaves out a key element to protect any employee, including lesbians and gay men who may not conform to their employer’s idea of how a man or woman should look and act,? Cathcart said in the press statement. ?This is a huge loophole through which employers sued for sexual orientation discrimination can claim that their conduct was actually based on gender expression, a type of discrimination that the new bill does not prohibit.?