From Metro Weekly: http://www.metroweekly.com/poliglot/2013/09/simmering-divide-over-endas-broad-religious-exempt.html
by
September 17, 2013
Congress has returned to Washington after its month-long summer recess, and as a historic Senate vote draws nearer on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, lingering divisions over the legislation’s religious exemption could set the stage for a battle between advocates in the months ahead.
During a panel discussion in New York City last week hosted by Freedom to Work as the first part of its “ENDA Situation Room” series, a bipartisan panel met to “plot a path forward” for the bill, which has languished in Congress for decades. But that path forward rapidly became mired in a debate over whether ENDA’s religious exemption as written would open the door to LGBT discrimination in places far beyond churches and synagogues, and whether narrowing ENDA’s religious exemption would cause shaky Republican support to collapse entirely.
According to Tico Almeida, president of Freedom to Work, the religious exemption as written has proven popular among Republicans who might not otherwise support ENDA and is the “sweet spot of both law and politics.”
“I think it is the best of all of the options because it provides clarity,” Almeida said. “It creates a 100 percent match with the entities that are exempt from Title VII religious provisions [of the Civil Rights Act]. So we have 40 years of case law, we have 40 years of precedent, we have 40 years of experience that will let religious employers know whether they are covered by ENDA.”
Almeida bears a special relationship with the current religious exemption: He helped write it. As chief counsel for ENDA in the House of Representatives from 2007 to 2010, Almeida was one of two individuals who helped craft its current language. The bill states that ENDA “shall not apply to a corporation, association, educational institution or institution of learning, or society that is exempt from the religious discrimination provisions of title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” which prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
But while Almeida has fervently defended the language, several prominent organizations have said it’s just not good enough.
Continue reading at: http://www.metroweekly.com/poliglot/2013/09/simmering-divide-over-endas-broad-religious-exempt.html
