Prof. Catherine Connell on Protecting LGBT Americans from Employment Discrimination
In a post on the University of California Press Blog, Professor Catherine Connell writes about the “legal rights lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans are still struggling to secure, including the right to employment.” Citing four decades of failed attempts at passing federal protections, Connell discusses the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill expected to be reintroduced – for the eleventh time – to Congress within the month, which would protect all employees federally from employment discrimination based upon sexual identity and/or gender expression.
Drawing from interviews with gay and lesbian teachers conducted in 2008 for her recently published book, “School’s Out: Gay and Lesbian Teachers in the Classroom” (University of California Press, 2014), Connell considers the impact of this legislation and calls for even more work to be done “to help gay and lesbian teachers and by extension, LGBT workers more generally, feel truly protected.”