Thursday, 10 May 2001

BATON ROUGE-Conservative Republican state Sen. Ken Hollis (R-Metairie) may hold the deciding vote on three workplace protection bills before the state Senate Labor & Industrial Relations Committee.

Hollis, a possible candidate for governor in 2003, is seen by both sides as the pivotal vote that will decide the fate of three bills designed to ban employment discrimination-two based on sexual orientation, and one based on actual or perceived gender identity and sexual orientation.

A committee vote on one of the measures was expected Thursday.

"The senator has not said how he feels about this legislation," said Sharon Shannahan, a Hollis spokesperson. "But I am sure he will have something to say when the time comes."

Two of the committee's five members are "hopeless causes" when it comes to gay-friendly measures like the discrimination bills before the committee, according to a Senate legislative aide. State Senators Noble E. Ellington (D-Winnsboro) and Kenneth Smith (D-Winnfield) have proven unsympathetic to gay rights issues in the past, the aide said.

Ellington, in a hearing last week, mocked the bills by saying that enacting proposed anti-discrimination legislation would be like "protecting bald-headed or one-eyed people," according to Gambit.

Two other committee members appear to support any of the three bills: Charles Jones (D-Monroe), the committee chairman, and Lynn B. Dean (R-Braithwaite), who introduced the two bills that do not include gender identification.

Related Issues For an overview of this issue see: Legislation

Dean's bills are supported by the gay-friendly Forum for Equality in New Orleans, while a bill from state Sen. Donald Cravins (D-Lafayette) has a nod of approval from Louisiana Lesbian & Gay Political Action Caucus and New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial's advisory committee on gay issues, LAGPAC co-chair Chris Daigle said.

Jones, in fact, indicated his support last week when he kicked back one of Dean's bills for revisions so that it could pass the committee.

"We cannot put our heads in the sand and think the issue will go away. It will not go away," Jones said.

Dean supports his two bills, which do not include gender identity, as well as the one from Cravins, which includes protection for sexual orientation and transgendered workers.

Members of the committee voted on May 3 to defer action on one of Dean's bills, SB 1083, while taking no action on the other, SB 1085.

Lobbying for employment bill

At press time, the measure by Cravins-which does include gender identity-was expected to come to a committee vote on May 10. A Cravins spokesperson said that even though his bill was introduced before Dean's bills, it is being heard later because Cravins has not yet pushed the measure.

Both Cravins and his co-author, state Sen. Paulette Irons, are expected to focus on the bill this week, Daigle said. LAGPAC will also be actively lobbying senators and voters before the hearing this week.

LAGPAC co-chairs Daigle and Carrie Evans, along with new executive director Melinda Shelton, will contact senators, while volunteers distribute some 65,000 postcards to voters across the state on the bill, Daigle said. Postcards encourage voters to voice their support to senators via phone, fax or e-mail.

LAGPAC was also expected to host GLBT Visibility Day at the capitol on May 10.

Business group opposes bills

Two years ago, similar legislation was stymied by an effective lobbying effort on the part of the Christian Coalition and the Louisiana Association of Business & Industry, a business lobby group.

Even after several revisions that addressed LABI concerns, the group remains opposed to all three non-discrimination bills, primarily because "any cause of actions in the bills means that employers could be sued and end up spending a lot of money in court defending themselves," said Jim Patterson, employee relations director for LABI in Baton Rouge.

Patterson said if provisions that allow complainants to sue employers for monetary damages were removed from either of the three measures, LABI would most likely end its active opposition.

But that would remove the teeth from the measures, a move Patterson said is unlikely to take place.

"That kind of bill would end up meaning nothing for its proponents, so I don't really see that happening," he said.

Gay activists have criticized LABI's ongoing effort to defeat a workplace protection bill.

"The supreme irony to me is that nationwide it is the business community that has taken the lead on employment non-discrimination issues," Daigle said. "But yet in Louisiana, it is precisely those same lobby groups that we have to overcome to get government to catch up with business."

Patterson said there is a great difference between a "company deciding to assume a policy of its own volition, and quite another when it is imposed by the government with litigatory consequences." The group's opposition has nothing to do with an anti-gay stance, but rests on the costs of the measures for businesses, he said.

The Louisiana AFL-CIO said the measures are about equality in the workplace, lobbyist Louis Reine told the Baton Rouge Advocate.

"This is about whether somebody should have the ability to go into the work force to earn a living, to put food on the table and clothes on their back," Reine told the newspaper. "That's something I would hope the state of Louisiana would promote as a right everybody should have."

Conservative religious groups are also watching the measures.

This year, as opposed to the 1999 attempts at workplace protection, "there seems to be less excitement in the air," said Grant Storms, conservative talk show host for WSHO in New Orleans, who urged listeners to help defeat past gay-friendly legislation.

"I really haven't heard as much about these bills," Storms said. "I don't know if that means there is less interest out there or not."

But Storms said that if any of the three measures seems to be near passage in committee, he would wage a vigorous on-air campaign to stop them.

"There are certain issues that galvanize our audience, and this is one of them," he said.

-The Associated Press contributed to this article.