Sarah Gamard

Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE — The city of New Orleans estimates it gained an extra $100 million from hosting the 2017 NBA All-Star Game this past February.

Being more LGBT-inclusive than North Carolina was beneficial for Louisiana’s wallet. The city was the NBA’s second-choice venue for the lucrative extravaganza — which had hotels at 99 percent occupancy that weekend — due to a controversial North Carolina bill that prevented transgender people from using the bathroom of their identified gender and, as a result, the city of Charlotte from getting the All-Star game.

That does not mean the Louisiana Legislature or the state’s residents are ready to embrace a progressive mindset on the issue — a campaign 24 years in the making.

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Still, one lawmaker persists. Sen. Troy Carter, D-New Orleans, has filed Senate Bill 155 in the current session, which would prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. He also filed the first one in 1993.

“Gender identity” refers to individuals who do not identify with their birth gender.

SB155 should experience the first round of debate in committee this coming week. It is unlikely to pass, but that has not stopped Carter.

Dylan Waguespack, director of the state’s pro-LGBT organization EqualityLA, wants to see SB155 become law because it is “perfectly legal” for Louisianans to be denied jobs or fired for being transgender or homosexual. He said he has witnessed instances of both.

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For the first year ever, the LSU Louisiana Survey polled Louisianans on the issue after a series of lawsuits between the state’s governor and attorney general on the same issue. It found that most Louisianans, at least for now, support legal protection from discrimination in the workplace: 76 percent on the basis of sexual orientation and 70 percent for gender identity.

The survey director, Michael Henderson, said support may be because the average Louisiana citizen has yet to form a strong opinion on workplace discrimination. The debate, unlike that on transgender bathroom choice or business services to the LGBT community, is comparatively young.

It is also at odds with similar debates, such as whether businesses should be allowed to refuse services to same-sex couples. (Louisiana was split on that issue about 50-50.)

Louisiana mirrors the country for the hotter debates, such as same-sex business service. But in terms of workplace discrimination, Henderson said he does not know how results compare to other states.

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Henderson said the latest results of his survey are encouraging for people who support nondiscrimination laws, but not necessarily discouraging for those who oppose them.

He said if the debate eventually heats up the way it has for similar issues, support for employment nondiscrimination could “peel away” as citizens hear the politics behind the issue. A business group’s argument against SB155 for wanting to avoid lawsuits, for example, may sway support of those who hear and listen to that argument.

But the opposite could happen, as well.

“Maybe even in a conservative place like Louisiana, we can see some of these attitudes on social issues change over time,” Henderson said, noting that Louisiana’s opinions on the same-sex marriage changed over the years, according to the survey.

Nondiscrimination advocates want to see comprehensive discrimination bans similar to those in New Orleans and Shreveport, which prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity beyond just the workplace.

Louisiana American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Executive Director Marjorie Esman is one of them. She called SB155 a “minor step” towards equality and nondiscrimination because it only covers employment, not the “overwhelming other ways” people can experience discrimination.

None of the major local business lobbying groups — the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI), the Louisiana Home Builder’s Association and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) — have a public position on SB155.

Although there are an estimated 88,000 LGBT employees in Louisiana, major business lobbying groups have opposed similar measures in the past, arguing such measures would flood courts with lawsuits and impose unnecessary regulations. Waguespack believes the business lobbies are discretely advancing a conservative agenda.

Carter agreed. “Many people hide behind lots of different curtains to disguise their unwillingness to provide fairness and equality,” he said.

But LABI Vice President of Governmental Relations Jim Patterson disputed the secret accusation. In fact, he feels the reverse is happening, that a hidden agenda beyond ending discrimination could loom under the surface of SB155.

“As is often the case, there’s more going on here than we’re necessarily aware of,” Patterson said. Carter disputes this.

Sen. J.P. Morrell, D-New Orleans, introduced a similar pro-LGBT bill in 2011 and sees it differently. He said many large corporations and businesses avoid states they perceive to have an “antagonistic climate” to the LGBT community, as was the case with North Carolina’s “disastrous” bill that brought the All-Star Game to New Orleans.

Majorities of both parties in Louisiana currently support workplace protections, but the Louisiana Survey shows Democrats, in general, are more supportive than Republicans.

Even so, the state’s most powerful Democrat is unoptimistic about SB155.

“I’ve been here for a decade,” Gov. John Bel Edwards told the Manship School News Service. “This legislature is not ready for (SB155). They’re just not ready. I’m not saying never will it be ready, because this is (a national) issue and Louisiana is moving very fast... But it hasn’t gotten to that point yet.”

Last year, Edwards issued an executive order with the same aim as SB155, which was ultimately ruled technically unconstitutional in December. Applying mainly to state employees, it was the first of its kind in the state to use the term “gender identity.”

Carter’s ambitiously surpasses Edwards’ order. It applies to all businesses, including private contractors. Religious organizations are exempt.

Rep. Beryl Amedée, R-Houma, one of the seventeen Louisiana House Republicans who formally sided with Attorney General Jeff Landry in blocking Edwards’ executive order, said she opposes both the order and SB155 for the same reason: They place greater restrictions and burdens on businesses beyond what federal law requires and challenges religious freedom.

“I’ve hired homosexual people before and I’d do it again,” Amedée said. “I don’t want the government telling me that I have to.”

But she feels her position is misunderstood. “People don’t want to understand today that if I disagree with you, that doesn’t mean that I hate you.”

Others feel victimized. Family Forum President Gene Mills of Sunset said SB155 would “specifically punish” religious liberty proponents such as his group.

Mills said his organization does not support discrimination in the workplace, but it does oppose creating a new, legally undefined and “largely untested” category for nondiscrimination.

“There’s one sexual orientation. To rearrange (the concept of gender identity), except in some very extraordinarily rare cases where malformation and other genetic disorders have disrupted that process, is very dangerous public policy.”

Carter has attempted to enact his legislative proposal to remove workplace discrimination for sexual orientation and gender identity twice in the past. The first time in 1993, when he was as a member of the House of Representatives and pushed the bill to an unsuccessful floor vote, and last year where it died on the Senate floor.

Between 1993 and now, there have been multiple, albeit failed, attempts by several lawmakers to get the measure to the floor for debate.

“In 24 years, not a whole bunch has changed,” Carter said.

Sen. Morrell and Rep. Joseph Bouie, D-New Orleans, who both failed to pass their own pro-LGBT bills in the past decade, agree. Neither are refiling their bills this year.

"I really don’t like to just introduce bills to get them knocked down," Bouie said. Passing LGBT anti-discrimination and equal pay for women, he said, have been “the most difficult.”

Morrell has similar reservations. He said the budget shortfall is “dominating” this year’s session, drowning out bills like SB155.

But they have hope. Morrell said that repeatedly introducing the bill, regardless of whether it passes, forces people to defend a “bad position” which potentially makes that position evolve.

“With the state of Louisiana, change is often glacial,” Morrell said. “But it happens.”

Amedée and Patterson both said they might change their minds if federal law — which does not currently prohibit employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity — changes.

It is unclear when federal law will change, but dozens of states have changed their laws to protect LGBT citizens from employment discrimination. Louisiana is not one of them. In 2016, more than 50 LGBT protection bills were filed nationwide. Of those, only one became law.

About the same number of such bills have been introduced nationally in 2017, and several already have died.

This discourages LGBT advocates like Holton.

“We’re going to be stuck in this hole for a while, especially with this president and this federal administration,” she said.

But, at least at the state level, Waguespack is more hopeful. He said he does not see anti-LGBT agendas advancing, and that pro-LGBT lobbyist groups are the only forces stunting them.

“I don’t think there’s actually a real appetite for them, even in the House,” Waguespack said. “Certainly not in the Senate.”

Holton said that, despite Louisiana's "old-boy conservatism” getting in the way of change, she also is hopeful.

“I have to think that, one day, something is going to happen. It’s going to happen very incrementally. But at some point, something is going to change.”