Plaintiff attorneys David Boies (L) and Ted Olson talk to the media after oral arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court, on March 26, 2013 in Washington, DC. Olson, Boies call for new federal LGBT protections

Ted Olson and David Boies, the prominent attorneys who helped overturn California’s same-sex marriage ban, are backing a new federal law that would extend anti-discrimination protections to LGBT Americans.

Olson, a Republican former solicitor general under President George W. Bush, and Boies, who represented Al Gore in Bush v. Gore, are urging Republicans and Democrats in Congress to support the Equality Act, which will be introduced on Thusday. The law, whose language was provided to the Advocate, would amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act and other federal law to protect LGBT people from discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations and other arenas.

“The introduction of the Equality Act marks a historic moment for our country,” Boies and Olson said in a statement provided to POLITICO by the Human Rights Campaign, which is advocating on behalf of the bill. “The patchwork of protections in this country has provided a crazy quilt of laws, threatening the livelihood of many of the same couples who fought so long and so hard to have their marriages recognized. That’s why we support the idea of a comprehensive approach to non-discrimination protections that would embrace LGBT people as other groups who are protected by our civil rights laws.”

Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia have similar protections based on sexual orientation — only 19 of these states include protections for transgendered people — though the Obama administration has used various executive orders to extend protections across the country in certain arenas.

The Equality Act, sponsored by Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.), as well as Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), would nationalize such protections and make punishments for discrimination against LGBT people similar to punishments for the same sort of discrimination based on race. Laws like the Equality Act have been opposed by many conservatives on the grounds that they infringe on the religious liberty of business owners whose beliefs prohibit them from serving same-sex couples or participating in their weddings.

Olson is the first prominent Republican to come out in favor of the Equality Act.

“We urge Republicans and Democrats to once again come together to support this important legislation that provides the same protections to LGBT people as other Americans,” the two attorneys added.

Human Rights Campaign released to POLITICO a poll the group commissioned that showed that 64 percent of Republicans favor “protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people from discrimination in employment.” Among white millennials, support for such protections was 86 percent, with 65 percent saying they are less likely to support a candidate who does not favor them.

HRC hired Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, a Democratic firm, to conduct the survey.

No Democratic presidential candidate has yet endorsed the Equality Act since its introduction, though Hillary Clinton, Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders have all spoken out in favor of extending anti-discrimination protections to LGBT citizens.

Thus far no Republican presidential candidate has come out in favor of a sweeping federal law like the Equality Act. Different contenders have shown varying levels of ease in discussing whether or not sexual orientation should be treated legally as an immutable characteristic akin to race or ethnicity.

The political fallout from the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage decision has pushed many conservatives in the opposite direction: More than 100 congressional Republicans, for instance, have cosponsored legislation that would prevent the federal government from ending the tax-exempt status of an organization that refuses to recognize same-sex marriages based on religious belief. A number of GOP presidential candidates — including Sens. Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio — support that bill.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush weighed in on the issue of anti-discrimination bans during a visit last week to a tech start-up in California. When asked by a gay employee whether or not he favors anti-discrimination protections for LGBT citizens, Bush responded that a florist “should be obligated to sell [a gay couple] flowers; doing otherwise would be discriminatory.” He added, though, that a florist objecting to same-sex marriage should not be obligated to participate in the wedding ceremony itself.

The employee followed up by asking for Bush’s stance on California’s state law, which protects LGBT citizens from discrimination in housing, public accommodations and employment. “I think this should be done state-by-state, I totally agree with that,” Bush said.

A spokesperson for the Florida Republican declined to clarify whether or not he would support such a law’s passage in his home state.

Last Sunday, after Scott Walker’s multiple statements refusing to call on the Boy Scouts of America to end their ban on gay scout leaders, the Wisconsin governor made headlines on CNN’s “State of the Union” when he said “I don’t know” when asked whether or not he believes being gay is a choice.

Walker’s remarks appeared in various Democratic fundraising emails and attacks, but failed to create the same stir as previous comments from Dr. Ben Carson, who said on CNN that being gay is “absolutely” a choice because “a lot of people who go into prison, go into prison straight and when they come out they’re gay.”

Gregory Angelo, executive director of the pro-LGBT Log Cabin Republicans, said he believes such answers about discrimination and whether or not being LGBT is a choice could haunt Republican candidates during the 2016 election.

“They’re largely seen by voters as a cultural litmus test to see how in touch candidates are with modern America,” said Angelo, who added that Carson’s comments will likely be the most harmful outside of the party’s socially conservative base.

This article tagged under: Gay Rights

California

LGBTQ