Gay Groups Back Off ENDA, but Why?

by Michael Sean Winters

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According to this morning's Washington Post, several gay rights groups are withdrawing their support for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in light of the Supreme Court's ruling in the Hobby Lobby case.

“If a private company can take its own religious beliefs and say you can’t have access to certain health care, it’s a hop, skip and a jump to an interpretation that a private company could have religious beliefs that LGBT people are not equal or somehow go against their beliefs and therefore fire them,” said Rea Carey, the group’s [National Gay & Lesbian Task Force] executive director.

This makes no sense to me. The Court in Hobby Lobby ruled that the government failed to find a less burdensome way of providing the contraceptive care that Hobby Lobby did not want to provide. How do you make a non-discrimination law less burdensome on anyone? The Court could rule, of course, that preventing discrimination is not a compelling government interest, but I doubt they would. I suspect that this is what happens when people get all upset about an issue but do not take the time to think it through. 

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