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Could This KY Law Finally Protect Gay People More Than Smokers?

After a 20-year battle, LGBTQ Kentuckians could successfully secure statewide nondiscrimination protections.

In Kentucky, it’s illegal to be fired for being a smoker but not for being gay. After a 20-year battle, a pair of bills introduced last week could change that.

Senate Bill 166 and House Bill 164 would update Kentucky’s civil rights laws to ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing, and public accommodations. The Bluegrass State currently provides protections on the basis of characteristics like race, religion, color, national origin, disability status, and—believe it or not—cigarette smoking.

No other state in the U.S. currently extends civil rights on the basis of tobacco use, yet 21 have statewide LGBTQ-inclusive nondiscrimination laws on the books.

State House Rep. Patti Minter (D-Bowling Green) says that fact “speaks volumes.”

“It's appalling that there are many people who still think it's OK to discriminate against people on the basis of who they are, how they identify, or who they love,” she tells NewNowNext. “It's really difficult to believe that we're still having this conversation in 2019, but we certainly are.”

A board member of the Kentucky ACLU, Minter has been fighting this battle for two decades. After Louisville and Lexington became the state’s first municipalities to offer citywide protections on the basis of LGBTQ identity in 1999, she wrote a letter to Bowling Green’s local human rights commission urging them to adopt similar measures. She hoped that would be enough.

“I jokingly said that I thought I’d write one letter and the point would be so self-evident that we would see the ordinance passed immediately,” she recalls. “We would just be able to move on.”

Today, Bowling Green—a college town home to Western Kentucky University—remains the largest city in Kentucky without a local nondiscrimination ordinance on the books. Although 10 local municipalities have enacted protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, 75% of LGBTQ Kentuckians can still face legal discrimination at home or in the workplace.

The effort to address that glaring gap has picked up unprecedented support. HB 164 boasts 21 cosponsors in Kentucky’s House of Representatives, and the Senate version of the bill, SB 166, nabbed eight in the legislature’s upper chambers.

To date, nearly a quarter of state lawmakers have signed onto the legislation.

Chris Hartman, executive director of the Fairness Campaign, says that benchmark is nothing short of historic. A total of 29 cosponsors in both state houses marks a major increase from 2018, when legislators also considered a proposal that would allow churches and religious entities to disregard any LGBTQ-inclusive civil rights passed by local municipalities.

“This is my 11th legislative session,” he tells NewNowNext. “I remember when we hit 10 cosponsors on the law. It was substantial. No one was talking about it or treating it as a legitimate issue.”

An LGBTQ-inclusive nondiscrimination bill didn’t even receive a hearing in the Kentucky General Assembly until 2014.

Ty Wright/Getty Images

ASHLAND, KY - SEPTEMBER 3: A man waves a gay pride flag during a protest in front of the federal courthouse September 3, 2015 in Ashland, Kentucky. Kim Davis, the Rowan County Clerk of Courts, is expected to appear at a contempt of court hearing at the courthouse today. Citing a sincere religious objection, Davis, who is an Apostolic Christian, has refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in defiance of a Supreme Court ruling. (Photo by Ty Wright/Getty Images)

This year’s momentum is largely due to the fact that every single legislator who supported a statewide nondiscrimination ordinance was reelected in the 2018 midterms (although some retired). In addition, Hartman estimates that roughly six pro-equality lawmakers were voted in whose districts had never backed LGBTQ protections before.

Advocates say this incremental progress is ultimately how LGBTQ rights become law: by steadily gaining more and more supporters each year.

“I don’t know what the tipping point will be,” Hartman says. “Maybe it’s 25 cosponsors, maybe it’s 30, or maybe we have to have half the House signed on before they eventually vote on it. But we’re headed in the right direction.”

Although Kentucky voted for Donald Trump by a 30-point margin in the 2016 election and both houses of the legislature are controlled by Republicans, the biggest roadblock to a nondiscrimination ordinance in 2018 isn’t party affiliation. The Kentucky General Assembly meets for a shorter session every other year, meaning advocates only have 30 days in total to get legislation passed.

There’s already a lot on the agenda during the abbreviated term. In 2019, LGBTQ civil rights are competing for airtime with medical marijuana and an ongoing pension crisis, the latter of which may not be resolved this year. Hartman predicts pensions are likely to “eat up the vast majority of the long session.”

“Do I think [a nondiscrimination bill is] going to pass this year or next year?” he says. “Probably not. But it’s got a substantial chance.”

Xinhua/Zhang Mocheng via Getty Images

NEW YORK, May 23, 2018 -- U.S. Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin receives an interview with Xinhua in New York, the United States, May 22, 2018. Matt Bevin expects his upcoming first visit to China will help boost the Bluegrass State's cooperation with the rising economic powerhouse. (Xinhua/Zhang Mocheng via Getty Images)

Should the legislation make its way to the desk of Gov. Matt Bevin (pictured above), it’s an open question whether he would sign it. The Republican has a mixed record on LGBTQ rights. Although he called a proposed anti-trans bathroom bill “unnecessary,” Bevin supports the right of businesses to refuse service to LGBTQ clients and thinks university groups should be able to turn away LGBTQ students.

But since HB 164 and SB 166 were introduced Wednesday, the bills already boast bipartisan support. Two of its cosponsors in the Kentucky Senate are Republicans: Julie Raque Adams (R-Louisville) and Alice Kerr (R-Lexington).

Sen. Morgan McGarvey (D-Louisville), lead sponsor of SB 166, tells NewNowNext he hoped more conservatives would come out in favor of nondiscrimination. “It’s just the right thing to do,” he adds.

But approaching the anniversary of Louisville’s nondiscrimination ordinance, Hartman is reminded of a witticism often attributed to Mark Twain. When he first started working in Kentucky politics a decade ago, he heard it three times in the same week, he recalls: “I want to be in Kentucky when the world ends because it’s always 20 years behind.”

The same quote has also been credited to W.C. Fields, and others say it was Cincinnati that was the intended target. Regardless, when it comes to LGBTQ nondiscrimination laws in Kentucky, Hartman knows firsthand that the observation is literally true. “Even though a quarter of the general assembly has signed on, we’re still not close to making a statewide law a reality 20 years later,” he says.

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