Why We Need ENDA .....

Mia Macy, a veteran and a police officer, was recently hired by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives in California; and she was thrilled. That elation, however, lasted just a few days because the bureau then informed her that her position had been eliminated.

Then they quietly hired someone else.

See, Mia Macy is transgender, and during her interview she’d told the bureau that she was transitioning to become a woman; and she feels that’s why she was told there was no longer a job for her.

And she has no legal recourse to sue for discrimination.

Macy is person spotlighted in a new series by the Center for American Progress as part of its campaign for Employment Non-Discrimination Act [ENDA]—a federal bill that would ban discrimination against LGBT Americans.

Without passage of the bill, it remains legal in 29 states to fire someone for being LGBT. And while California does ban transgender discrimination, federal law does not, yet, and Macy was seeking a federal job. 

The good news, and yes there is some, at least in this one instance, is that Mia Macy’s job was reinstated after the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission unanimously decided that discriminating against transgender Americans was illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which bans discrimination based on sex.

It was a landmark decision, but it doesn’t do anything regarding federal law. For that we need passage of ENDA, and maybe we’ll be hearing fewer cases of anti-LGBT workplace discrimination.

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