On December 6, 2019, the National LGBTQ Task Force Executive Director, Rea Carey, issued a statement in support of the Fairness for All Act—a bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives for protecting the rights of LGBTQ individuals along with religious rights of people of faith.
What Is the Fairness for All Act?
The provisions of the proposed Fairness for All Act add protections for sexual orientation and gender identity to federal civil rights laws. Additionally, the bill secures religious exemptions for those matters in anticipation of the possible conflicts instigated by the new law.
The National LGBTQ Task Force Statement
In response, the National LGBTQ Task Force—an organization dedicated to pursuing “full equality and liberation for LGBTQ people and their families”—issued a statement acknowledging the good intentions of the bill, while expressing the organization’s general opposition to it, outlining certain criticisms regarding the bill’s shortcomings.
According to the statement, “The Fairness for All Act purports to create protections for people in the LGBTQ community, but the exemptions from non-discrimination protections it includes would leave behind the most marginalized people. It creates exemptions that apply to employment, housing, child welfare, and other areas. Additionally, it challenges the scope of existing civil rights protections for women and people of minority faiths. As such, the Task Force will continue to support the more comprehensive protections for LGBTQ people and other marginalized people that are provided by the Equality Act – which was passed by the US House of Representatives earlier this year with bipartisan support.”
What Is the Equality Act?
Earlier this year, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill known as “The Equality Act,” which also strives to protect the rights of LGBTQ individuals with regard to discrimination in employment and other areas. Both the Equality Act and the Fairness for All Act would add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes under federal civil rights laws, including an expansion of “public accommodation” as defined under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Unlike the Fairness for All Act, the Equality Act does not recognize the same exemptions for anti-discrimination rules as they would apply to religious persons. Although it preserves certain existing faith-based exemptions to civil rights laws, the Equality Act would limit the scope of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, one of the primary pieces of federal legislation that religious persons and organizations cite to defend against discrimination claims.
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