Alabama House committee kills LGBT civil rights bill

A House committee Wednesday killed a bill that would have banned discrimination against individuals based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Christopher England, D-Tuscaloosa, would have added the classes to state protections against discrimination in employment, housing, accommodations, financial transactions and voting.

"I believe in order to protect those classifications, they need to be enumerated," England told the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday afternoon. "There is some case history that if it's not enumerated, it's not protected."

The committee voted to carry it over, killing it for the remainder of the session. Rep. David Faulkner, R-Mountain Brook, who moved to have it carried over, said he "did not want anyone discriminated against," but said that he had concerns about how the legislation would interact with existing statutes in Alabama.

"It's creating a new protected class that our nation does not recognize, much less Alabama," he said. "When you are talking about those types of issues, this is much larger than marriage. This is far broader than that."

England and other supporters were upbeat about the result following the vote.

"This is a process," said Rep. Patricia Todd, D-Birmingham, the director of the Human Rights Campaign Alabama and the only openly gay member of the Legislature. "I guess I've been here nine years now. We haven't passed any bad legislation, and that's great. Alabama is further ahead than Arkansas, Texas and other states. But now it's time to move forward with some positive legislation that protects people in the workplace, and that's what this bill would do."

The HRC last year announced a campaign throughout the Deep South to put discrimination protections in place for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. The campaign got a boost in December when Apple CEO Tim Cook, a Robertsdale native and Auburn graduate, criticized Alabama's slow progress on LGBT rights in a speech at the State Capitol.

Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh, R-Anniston and Rep. Mike Ball, R-Huntsville, have both introduced pieces of legislation that would ban discrimination against LGBT state workers. Ball's bill – which bans discrimination based on a "trait or characteristic, immutable or otherwise" unrelated to work performance – was approved by the House Judiciary Committee Tuesday. Unlike those bills, England's legislation would have covered the private sector as well.

All the bills were introduced late in the session and face long odds of passage. Todd said she "appreciated the sentiment" of Ball's bill, but said it would be problematic.

"It is so broad I can imagine courts having no way to rule whether anything was discrimination or not," she said. "What if you don't shower often and you come to work? You can't be fired for that?

England said he would be happy to work with other lawmakers on the bill. The representative said he thought an expected U.S. Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage in late June could change people's minds.

"I think there's inevitability behind this particular piece of legislation," he said. "As days go by, months go by the Supreme Court decision this summer, I think you'll see a wide perspective change in Alabama."