Two pieces of landmark legislation are in danger of collapsing in the U.S. Congress. Nearing the end of his Presidency, George W. Bush has threatened to veto the Matthew Shepard Act. Meanwhile, legislators have dropped gender identity from the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).
ENDA
On April 24, 2007, ENDA H.R. 2015 – a bill that would ban workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity – was introduced into a subcommittee of the House of Representatives. On September 5, 2007, the subcommittee dropped gender identity from the bill on the basis that there was not enough support to pass a transgender-inclusive version of the act. The bill was reintroduced without gender identity as ENDA H.R. 3685.
In the months that followed, gay activists were caught in a heated debate – should they praise the incomplete version of the bill as a stepping stone or condemn it as less than full rights for the entire community? While the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) hailed the passage, groups such as Lambda Legal and the ACLU Lesbian and Gay Rights Project opposed any version of the bill that was not fully inclusive.
Lacking gender identity provisions, H.R. 3685 passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 235-184 on November 7, 2007 and is currently awaiting a vote in the U.S. Senate.
MATTHEW SHEPARD ACT
In 1998 in one of America’s most famous hate crimes, Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten and killed in Laramie, Wyoming simply because he was gay. The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007 has often been referred to as the Matthew Shepard Act because it would extend hate crimes legislation to cover violent crimes perpetrated against an individual because of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity.
In 2007, the Matthew Shepard Act passed both houses of Congress, but the legislation is still unlikely to become law in 2008. After passing the House of Representatives 237-180, President Bush threatened to veto the legislation. The Act was then attached to a Defense bill in the Senate to make it a less likely candidate for Presidential veto, and subsequently, the new attached bill was passed. Since the two houses of Congress need to pass the same bill before the President signs it into law, the legislation is currently stalled, lacking the partisan support in the attached form to make it through the House of Representatives and yet in danger of veto if passed in the Senate without being attached to other legislation.
The FBI estimated in 2005 that 14% of all reported hate crimes were based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Gay rights groups continue to push for legislation that extends hate crime protection to LGBT people.
