LGBT workers in Mississippi fired, harassed: Report

A man lost his job after the juvenile detention center where he worked learned he was gay. A gay man was fired from a restaurant after repeated harassment. And a transgender employee alleged a loan company discriminated against him by telling him his gender expression violated company policy and asking that he sign a document agreeing to dress as a woman during business trips.

These three incidents, happening over the last few years in Mississippi, are in a Williams Institute report on workplace discrimination of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. Almost 40 percent of LGBT employees in Mississippi reported harassment at work, and about 1 in 4 said they had experienced discrimination in the workplace, the report said.

Even as polls have found a majority of Mississippians support workplace protections for the LGBT community, the state has no laws to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Mississippi is among about 30 states in which LGBT people are unprotected from employment discrimination, Williams Institute Senior Counsel Christy Mallory said.

“In these areas, there’s nowhere to go to report that type of discrimination, so it’s hard to get a measure of it, but it’s something we’re seeing anecdotally or in surveys,” she said.

Cities in Mississippi also have not passed laws that would prohibit workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. However, the Jackson City Council and other municipal governing bodies have passed resolutions supporting nondiscrimination of LGBT people.

“I think it’s important to recognize that discrimination against anyone is bad for everyone, that we would be very sensitive to recognize that this touches on issues related to religious liberties, but I think there are ways to find the appropriate balance,” Jackson City Council President Melvin Priester Jr. said.

State Sen. Phillip Gandy, R-Waynesboro, said he is unaware of any instances of workplace discrimination against LGBT people. The author of the state’s religious freedom bill, who has completed his last term in the Legislature, is concerned instead about what he views as discrimination against Christians, such as Kim Davis, the Kentucky circuit clerk who was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

“I believe we’re seeing, just as an example, the clerk in Kentucky with her convictions as a Christian that she could not participate in that,” Gandy said. “There are arguments on both sides of that, but I believe she, as a Christian, has rights that have long been honored in the United States and been protected. We’ve seen some changes in that area around the nation.”

Although Priester said he would entertain a local ordinance, he thinks the city lacks the ability to enforce an antidiscrimination law.

“There’s a lot of work to do to prevent discrimination against a lot of different people, so one thing I hope comes out of the current attention to the LGBT community is a commitment for our city, state and nation as a whole to focus on how we can support equality and have protections that are fair and forceful,” he said.

Jackson Mayor Tony Yarber was unavailable for an interview, spokeswoman Shelia Byrd said, but she released a statement on his behalf that said: “The mayor supports human rights for all human beings.”

Most Mississippi state employees aren’t protected by law from workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. For the most part, higher education is the exception, with all but one of the state’s public universities — Mississippi Valley State — barring orientation-based discrimination against their employees. Mississippi University for Women and University of Southern Mississippi go one step further by not allowing discrimination based on gender identity, as well.

Brenda Scott, president of the Mississippi Alliance of State Employees, said expanding workplace antidiscrimination laws to all state employees would be a good start.

“I don’t think discrimination should be allowed for any reason,” she said. “Constitutionally, there shouldn’t be discrimination of any kind for services, for employees or in any area or in the public sector.”

Contact Mollie Bryant at mbryant2@gannett.com or (601) 961-7251. Follow @MollieEBryant on Twitter.

24 percent of respondents said they had experienced workplace discrimination, and 38 percent said they had been harassed at work because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

The median income of men in same-sex couples is 35 percent lower than that of men in different-sex marriages.

Polls find that 81 percent of Mississippi residents think that LGBT people experience a moderate amount to a lot of discrimination in the state.

Percent of respondents who said they had experienced workplace

discrimination

Percent of respondents who said they had been harassed at work because of their sexual

orientation or gender identity.

Mississippi’s LGBT are vulnerable

A report by the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute found that34,800 LGBT workers are vulnerable to ongoing employment discrimination in Mississippi.