‘We’re not going back’: Horsford, LGBTQ leaders advocate for Equality Act

LAS VEGAS — When AJ Huth and her wife take road trips across the country, stopping in places that are not tourist locations, they talk with the locals who give a warm welcome.

“Most of my experiences are positive,” said Huth, the director of public affairs and civic engagement at The Center that serves the LGBTQ community of Nevada. “Most people support our community.”

But there’s still more work that needs to be done to fight discrimination and for equality, Huth said Tuesday evening at a roundtable with LGBTQ leaders of Nevada.

Last week Democrats in both the House and Senate reintroduced a bill that aims to do just that. The Equality Act would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, gender identity and sexual orientation by amending the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other anti-discrimination laws.

“Across the country LGBTQ+ individuals are being attacked from every direction in state legislatures and in Congress,” said Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., at the event Tuesday, where he announced the reintroduction of the bill.

“The reintroduction of the Equality Act sends a clear message that LGBTQI+ people deserve the same protections from discrimination as every other marginalized group,” he said.

Similar to how religious, racial and ethnic discrimination is illegal, the bill would prohibit discrimination on LGBTQ people in a variety of areas, such as employment, housing, health care, education, credit, federally funded programs and jury service.

The Equality Act was passed by the House of Representatives in both the 116th and 117th Congress almost down party lines, but it did not get voted on in the Senate.

Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., voted against the legislation twice. In 2019, he wrote in his newsletter that the Equality Act would cause significant damage to Title IX, which protects people from discrimination based on sex in education programs that receive funding from the federal financial assistance, and “would thereby end gender specific sports at all levels.”

“While the goal of this bill should be to protect all people, I could not support it because ironically, it will end up causing harm to some of the very issues it’s seeking to address,” Amodei wrote.

Horsford, who told the Review-Journal on Tuesday that the Equality Act would not damage Title IX, hopes this time will be different. Republicans control the House, but Democrats need just five Republicans to support the bill for it to be passed, Horsford said.

“I never sugarcoat it,” he said. “I’m not going to underestimate that challenge. But that means that the advocates, the organizers, the people who are most affected by this discrimination, by the attacks, have to be even more strategic in where they deploy or how they deploy their advocacy.”

Nevadans enjoy a lot of the protections the bill hopes to bring forward. In 2011, the Nevada Legislature and then-Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval approved bills that protected against discrimination in public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, added gender identity to Nevada’s housing anti-discrimination law and prohibited discriminatory employment practices based on gender identity or expression.

In 2022, Nevada voters passed the Equal Rights Amendment, adding language to the Nevada constitution that prohibits the denial of rights based on a person’s race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age disability, ancestry or national origin.

In the last legislative session, the LGBTQ community also saw some wins in the legislative session, Huth said. Gov. Joe Lombardo signed Democratic legislators’ bills such as one that requires health insurance providers to cover treatments for gender-affirming care.

But the community is not done as far as getting further protections for trans people and other protections in place for the LGBTQ community, said Sy Bernabei, executive director of Gender Justice Nevada.

“We need the Equality Act to have federal protections in place,” Bernabei said. “We can’t get comfortable just because we got some wins. … We got to do the work and keep doing it because we know what it feels like to win.”

Those protections can also be rolled back, said Horsford, who is a member of the LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. “All of our progress and all of our positive efforts will be for nothing if we don’t have those federal protections codified under the Equality Act. … We have one message: We’re not going back.”

Contact Jessica Hill at jehill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @jess_hillyeah on Twitter.