A Loophole To Drive A Truck Through

Indiana proposed non-discrimination legislation has an exemption that will allow just about anyone to discriminate against us.

Indiana Bill Would Ban Anti-LGBT Bias... Unless It's Faith-Based
A measure introduced in the state Senate Tuesday may enable more discrimination than it prevents, activists say.The Advocate
By Trudy Ring
November 18, 2015

Indiana Republican lawmakers have introduced a bill that would add sexual orientation and gender identity to state antidiscrimination law, but some activists say it would facilitate discrimination rather than prevent it.

At issue are the proposed law’s broad religious exemptions, which would allow nonprofits and even some for-profit small businesses to avoid penalties for discrimination by citing faith-based objections to accommodating LGBT people — making it, in a way, a resurrection of the “license to discriminate” law that raised such uproar earlier this year.

The bill, introduced Tuesday by Senate Republicans, would, among other things, “allow schools, employers and others to determine their own restroom policies for transgender people; businesses with fewer than four employees to refuse wedding services to same-sex couples; and religious-affiliated adoption agencies to reject prospective same-sex parents,” The Indianapolis Star reports.
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A key problem in the bill, according to ThinkProgress, is that these exemptions would apply only to the sexual orientation and gender identity provisions of the law, not to discrimination based on race, age, gender, or any other enumerated characteristic. Utah this year enacted an LGBT-inclusive law with broad religious exemptions, but the state had already applied those exemptions to other types of prohibited discrimination. However, “under Indiana’s bill, LGBT people are very much singled out for less robust protection,” the site points out.

This bill would fly in the face of Titles VII and IX of the Civil Rights Act and put employers and school force them to either follow the state law and be fined by the EEOC or the U.S. Department of Education or follow the federal law and face state action against them. Also the law would in effect allow adoption agencies that receive government funding to discriminate.