U.S. Senate passes ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, in historic vote

It took longer than it should have, but today, the Unit­ed States Sen­ate made his­to­ry by pass­ing the Employ­ment Non-Dis­crim­i­na­tion Act (ENDA) which out­laws dis­crim­i­na­tion in the work­place based on sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. The vote was six­ty-four to thir­ty-two, with four sen­a­tors not vot­ing. As is increas­ing­ly the case, Repub­li­cans sup­plied every sin­gle one of the votes against.

The White House applaud­ed the vote and released a state­ment by Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma urg­ing the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to take up the bill immediately.

For more than two cen­turies, the sto­ry of our nation has been the sto­ry of more cit­i­zens real­iz­ing the rights and free­doms that are our birthright as Amer­i­cans. Today, a bipar­ti­san major­i­ty in the Sen­ate took anoth­er impor­tant step in this jour­ney by pass­ing the Employ­ment Non-Dis­crim­i­na­tion Act, which would help end the injus­tice of our fel­low Amer­i­cans being denied a job or fired just because they are les­bian, gay, bisex­u­al or transgender.

Just as no one in the Unit­ed States can lose their job sim­ply because of their race, gen­der, reli­gion or a dis­abil­i­ty, no one should ever lose their job sim­ply because of who they are or who they love.

“Today’s vic­to­ry is a trib­ute to all those who fought for this progress ever since a sim­i­lar bill was intro­duced after the Stonewall riots more than three decades ago. In par­tic­u­lar, I thank Major­i­ty Leader Reid, Chair­man Harkin, Sen­a­tors Merkley and Collins for their lead­er­ship, and Sen­a­tor Kirk for speak­ing so elo­quent­ly in sup­port of this leg­is­la­tion. Now it’s up to the House of Representatives.

This bill has the over­whelm­ing sup­port of the Amer­i­can peo­ple, includ­ing a major­i­ty of Repub­li­can vot­ers, as well as many cor­po­ra­tions, small busi­ness­es and faith com­mu­ni­ties. They rec­og­nize that our coun­try will be more just and more pros­per­ous when we har­ness the God-giv­en tal­ents of every individual.

One par­ty in one house of Con­gress should not stand in the way of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans who want to go to work each day and sim­ply be judged by the job they do. Now is the time to end this kind of dis­crim­i­na­tion in the work­place, not enable it.

I urge the House Repub­li­can lead­er­ship to bring this bill to the floor for a vote and send it to my desk so I can sign it into law. On that day, our nation will take anoth­er his­toric step toward ful­fill­ing the found­ing ideals that define us as Americans.

Top House Repub­li­cans, includ­ing John Boehn­er, have said they will not bring ENDA to the floor of the House for a vote, even though the bill is sole­ly con­cerned with LGBT rights in the work­place. Now that the Sen­ate has actu­al­ly passed ENDA, and with more Repub­li­can sup­port than had been antic­i­pat­ed, the pres­sure on Boehn­er, Can­tor and com­pa­ny to allow a vote will only grow.

As in the Sen­ate, Democ­rats would need to pro­vide most of the votes for ENDA to pass, which is a major rea­son why Boehn­er does­n’t want to bring the bill up. He was embar­rassed last month when the House Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus was unit­ed in sup­port of the bill to end the Repub­li­can gov­ern­ment shut­down and pay Amer­i­ca’s bills, while Repub­li­cans were divid­ed. No won­der he’s been so dis­mis­sive of ENDA.

But if Boehn­er thinks he can sim­ply ignore ENDA, he’s mis­tak­en. Deny­ing LGBT indi­vid­u­als rights isn’t just ter­ri­ble pol­i­cy, it’s increas­ing­ly ter­ri­ble politics.

“This is a his­toric day on the long road towards equal­i­ty in the work­place,” said Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell. “For the first time, the Unit­ed States Sen­ate has passed the Employ­ment Non-Dis­crim­i­na­tion Act to pro­tect all employ­ees from dis­crim­i­na­tion based on their sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion or gen­der iden­ti­ty. I have been proud to cospon­sor this bill since 1994. Wash­ing­ton State is a nation­al leader in non-dis­crim­i­na­tion poli­cies. It’s time for the rest of the coun­try to catch up.”

“Today, we are one step clos­er to ensur­ing that all Amer­i­cans are judged on the job that they do, not their sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion,” Cantwell added. “I urge the Unit­ed States House to move for­ward and pass this bill.”

The roll call in the Pacif­ic North­west on S. 815 was as fol­lows:

Vot­ing Aye: Democ­rats Pat­ty Mur­ray and Maria Cantwell (WA), Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley (OR), Max Bau­cus and Jon Tester (MT), Mark Begich (AK); Repub­li­can Lisa Murkows­ki (AK)

Vot­ing Nay: Repub­li­cans Mike Crapo and Jim Risch (ID)

Once again, Ida­ho’s Repub­li­can duo in the U.S. Sen­ate have cast anoth­er embar­rass­ing vote that will reflect poor­ly on them in the annals of his­to­ry. But every oth­er Pacif­ic North­west sen­a­tor vot­ed to expand free­dom for LGBT individuals.

As men­tioned, no Demo­c­rat vot­ed against S. 815, although Sen­a­tor Bob Casey of Penn­syl­va­nia did not vote. Besides Lisa Murkows­ki, Repub­li­cans vot­ing for ENDA includ­ed Rob Port­man of Ohio, Kel­ly Ayotte of New Hamp­shire, Pat Toomey of Penn­syl­va­nia, Orrin Hatch of Utah, John McCain and Jeff Flake of Ari­zona, Mark Kirk of Illi­nois, and Dean Heller of Nevada.

LGBT advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tions applaud­ed the vote.

“This is a huge his­toric vic­to­ry for les­bian, gay, bisex­u­al and trans­gen­der peo­ple and their fam­i­lies. Most Amer­i­cans believe that every­one should have access to the Amer­i­can Dream, free from dis­crim­i­na­tion because of who they are or who they love. We thank the sen­a­tors who vot­ed to pass ENDA in a bipar­ti­san fash­ion,” said Rea Carey, ED of the Nation­al Gay and Les­bian Task Force Action Fund.

Human Rights Cam­paign Pres­i­dent Chad Grif­fin agreed.

“Each and every Amer­i­can work­er should be judged based on the work they do, and nev­er based on who they are. This broad Sen­ate coali­tion has sent a vital mes­sage that civ­il rights leg­is­la­tion should nev­er be tied up by par­ti­san polit­i­cal games… We firm­ly believe that if the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives were freed by John Boehn­er to vote its con­science, this bill could pass imme­di­ate­ly. It’s uncon­scionable that any one per­son would stand in the way of this cru­cial piece of the civ­il rights puz­zle,” Grif­fin said in a state­ment released fol­low­ing the vote.