The business coalition Indiana Competes, formed to lobby for the bill, and Freedom Indiana declared they won’t accept any bill which doesn’t include the transgendered.
Advertisement
The bill now moves to the full Senate, where it will likely be heard next week ahead of some key deadlines looming on the Senate calendar. Democratic Senate minority leader Timothy Lanane has introduced legislation – Senate Bill 2 – that would amend the state’s existing non-discrimination laws to include sexual orientation and gender identity, among other categories.
The measure was immediately excoriated by Democrats and LGBT rights supporters – including IN business leaders – for not going far enough because it does nothing help transgender people who are fired from a job, denied service or evicted due to their gender identity.
The Senate Rules Committee adopted an amendment Wednesday that would effectively repeal the law. We respect the legislative process and will continue to work with the General Assembly, but we will not support a final bill that does not provide for equal rights for the entire LGBT community.
People wait for the committee discussing LGBT civil rights to begin. Proposed as definitions for the state constitution, the new “super-RFRA” would strip away those clarifications that Pence signed regarding non-discrimination protections, swinging the door wide open for blatant discrimination against LGBT Hoosiers, visitors, and other minorities. Adoption agencies and others receiving taxpayer funding to serve the public should not be permitted to exclude people from services or benefits based on who they are. Mills says the findings by Visit Indy confirm that the law damaged the state’s economy. “The new proposal is the old RFRA all over again”.
“Since then, Hoosiers have called on lawmakers to send a strong signal, to make very clear that IN does not condone discrimination”. With the new amendment attached, it could now also allow anyone to wield religion as a sword of discrimination.
The legislation comes a year after Religious Freedom Restoration Act. But it would trump existing LGBT rights laws adopted by cities, including Indianapolis. The legislation is being pushed by extreme anti-LGBT Republican Senators Michael Young, Phil Boots, Jim Banks, and Dennis Kruse. Its religious exemptions “are broader than the religious refusal law passed last spring that has marked IN as a state of intolerance, tarnished the state’s reputation, and deprived it of convention revenue”, Camilla Taylor, Counsel at Lambda Legal had warned.
A third bill regarding LGBT rights, Senate Bill 66, will not advance.
Mirrors federal law in allowing religious-affiliated state contractors to limit their hiring to people who follow the organization’s teachings. The governor said during his recent State of the State speech that he would prioritize religious freedom over LGBT rights, and not everyone believes that the state’s business climate has been harmed. The fix, while imperfect, ensured that RFRA could not be used as a defense to a nondiscrimination claim.
The Indiana Senate Rules and Legislative Procedures Committee has passed a bill to extend civil rights to gay, lesbian and bisexual people.
McCorkle said he could not support a bill without protections for transgender people, and that reviving the RFRA language would “take us back to that dark moment in IN history”, according to the Star.
Senate Bill 100 would prohibit cities and towns from enforcing, existing or adding meaningful local civil rights protections to achieve fair treatment of their residents and as an economic development tool.
Advertisement
The Republican-backed law garnered quick and largely negative national backlash after it was signed by Gov. Mike Pence in March, with critics saying it sanctioned discrimination against gay people on religious grounds. They share the same authors in the Indiana Senate.
