Good news, folx! After decades of court battles and opposition from Republicans, Michigan’s legislature recently passed comprehensive LGBTQ+ non-discrimination protections, making it the 22nd state to pass such protections and the first state in three years to do so.
LGBTQ+ organizations are celebrating the victory as a big friggin’ deal — and it is, especially considering that over 400 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced in 38 state legislatures this year alone.
On Wednesday, Michigan’s House of Representatives voted to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the state’s 1976 Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act (ELCRA), a law that forbids housing, employment, and public accommodations discrimination against people’s age, skin color, height, weight, familial status, marital status, national origin, race, religion, and sex.
Republicans repeatedly blocked Democrat efforts to add LGBTQ+ protections to the bill as far back as 40 years ago, the bill’s gay sponsor Sen. Jeremy Moss (D), said. Republicans claimed that it would force religious people to act contrary to their spiritual beliefs and tried to add amendments that would’ve carved out religious exceptions. Luckily, Democrats didn’t allow any exceptions into the bill.
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“We’re often accused of having a secret agenda,” gay state Rep. Mike McFall (D) said while defending the latest bill. “The truth is the only agenda I have is to live life free from discrimination and to be able to walk down the street holding my husband’s hand without fear.”
When Democrats took full control of the state’s legislature and governor’s office last January, it finally gave them a clear path to protect queer citizens despite Republican opposition. Eight Republicans joined Wednesday’s 64-45 House vote to help pass the bill, signaling that even some conservatives have tired of their party’s anti-LGBTQ+ schtick.
The state’s Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has signaled that she intends to sign the bill into law, saying, “This is about doing the right thing, and it is just good economics. Bigotry is bad for business.”
The bill’s passage also came after years of conflicting decisions by the state’s deliberating bodies. In 2018, Michigan’s Civil Rights Commission said that ELCRA already forbade anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination. But in a 2020 Michigan Court of Claims ruling, the judge said otherwise.
Then, in 2022, Michigan’s Supreme Court issued a 5–2 ruling, upholding the commission’s view, after two religious business owners — a wedding venue and a hair removal service — refused to serve same-sex couples and a transgender client, respectively.
Equality Michigan, the state’s leading LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, said in a statement that the new protections will “[bring] us closer to a future where everyone is treated equally under the law.”
The Human Rights Campaign called the newly passed protections a victory against “extremist legislators [who] tried to fearmonger people,” and The Trevor Project called the protections “a beacon of hope and optimism” amid the numerous laws seeking to ban queer kids from learning about LGBTQ+ issues in schools and accessing gender-affirming medical care.
Related*
Watch this Republican mess from Missouri get schooled by her own colleague over her homophobic bill
This isn’t the first bout of right-wing hypocrisy to go viral this week (and it’s only Wednesday!).
Openminded
This is great news, but the pessimist in me has to remind me that you can’t really legislate people to be decent towards others. It’s often very hard to prove unlawful discrimination. The offenders always have other “legal” excuses for not hiring, not offering housing, etc. It is, thankfully, another step forward during a time that this community has seen too many steps pushed backwards.
RIGay
The second part of that is it just takes a handful of wingnuts to challenge the law in court all the way up to the SCOTUS, then all bets are off. There is no longer something called “States Protection under the law” so long as we have a hyper-conservative majority on the SCOTUS.
Kangol2
It’s a great step for Michigan and Michiganders but as RIGay and Openminded note, this isn’t a cure-all, and the anti-LGBTQ will certainly find ways (cf. Tennessee, etc.) to strip away LGBTQ people’s rights and equality. Just another positive push, though, to keep fighting!