Devi Rao, Fellow

Last week, the Senate HELP Committee (that’s Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions) held a hearing on an important piece of bipartisan legislation, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would provide lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals with long overdue protection against discrimination in the workplace. Specifically, ENDA would prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in both public and private employment (with exemption for small businesses and certain religious employers). Although in certain circumstances, LGBT individuals are currently protected from employment discrimination under the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, there is no federal law that explicitly prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

The HELP Committee hearing provided an important opportunity for advocates, scholars, and business executives to explain their support (and in one case, opposition) of ENDA to members of the Senate. It also marked an historic occasion—Kylan Broadus, Founder of the Trans People of Color Coalition, became the first openly transgender person to testify before the Senate, a milestone that Senator Harkin (and the Washington Blade) noted. Broadus spoke movingly about his experiences as a transgender American and with workplace discrimination, and described his transition as “a matter of living the truth and sharing that truth for the first time in [his] life.”

On Friday, President Obama officially endorsed two crucial pieces of legislation currently pending in Congress — the Student Non-Discrimination Act (SNDA) and the Safe Schools Improvement Act (SSIA). The bills are aimed at improving the climate in our nation's schools, especially for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students.

SNDA would outlaw discrimination in K-12 public schools on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity/expression. And the bipartisan SSIA would require schools to undertake affirmative efforts to prevent bullying and harassment in schools, including conduct based on a victim's sexual orientation and gender identity. These bills are essential — a 2009 study by GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network) found that nearly 9 out of 10 LGBT students experienced harassment in schools.

Here at the National Women's Law Center, we have been working actively with our coalition partners to advance SNDA and SSIA. Just last month, NWLC was among a group of seventy LGBT, civil rights, education, labor, and faith groups that sent a letter to President Obama urging him to publicly support and endorse SNDA. And he did!

The Administration's announcement of its support of SDNA and SSIA was timed to coincide with a screening of the new documentary film "Bully" at the White House. I was lucky enough to attend the screening, where Lee Hirsch, the director, and many of the students and families featured in the film spoke poignantly about bullying and harassment in schools, and urged audience members to work to eradicate it.