Omaha, Nebraska Legislature clash over LGBT protection

It's perfectly legal for a Nebraskan to be fired or evicted because she or he is gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. A battle between Omaha's City Council and the State Legislature in Lincoln appears to be brewing to change that.

Councilman Ben Gray of Omaha recently announced plans to make the LGBT community a "protected class" — like race, sex, political affiliation, disability or religion, which legally can't be the basis of employment or housing discrimination. A concrete proposal to that effect could come by the end of this month.

"I've seen enough smoke to know there's a fire," Gray told the Omaha World-Herald last week, adding that he knows gay and transgender people who'd left the city "because they saw it as an unfriendly place towards them." Repeated calls to Gray's office this week for comment weren't returned.

But earlier this month, State Sen. Beau McCoy, also from Omaha, introduced LB 912, a bill that would put a stop to Gray's plan by granting the authority to make that change to the state government alone.

McCoy has said the purpose of the bill is twofold: to make non-discrimination laws consistent across the state, which helps businesses, and to give anti-discrimination efforts more teeth by putting the strength of the legislature behind them.

"Discrimination doesn't have a border between towns and communities," McCoy said in an email. "Nebraskans who live in Gering, Kearney or a farm outside Wahoo deserve the same protections as those who live in larger cities."

Opponents of the bill, however, say if the ball can't get rolling in one city, this legal change might not happen at all. Some accuse McCoy of intentionally acting against Gray's proposal, though the connection remains unclear.

"I actually think that's why he introduced it," said Pat Tetreault, director of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's LGBTQA Resource Center (the name includes "questioning" and "ally" in the acronym), speaking for herself and not UNL. "If you really want to end discrimination across the state of Nebraska, then pass a law that ends discrimination."

Few areas of Nebraska have added LGBT protection on their own, and opponents to the extension often cite freedom of religion in their firings of those they consider abnormal or sinful. The city of Lincoln includes sexual orientation as a protected class in its contract with city employees, but Omaha and Grand Island don't. All four University of Nebraska campuses, Nebraska Wesleyan University and Southeast Community College include the provision, but Peru, Wayne and Chadron State Colleges do not.

McCoy's bill wouldn't affect those that include sexual orientation in dealings with employees, such as UNL or Lincoln, because the university and city act as businesses in that context, not local governments. Otherwise, a town or county ordinance would be nullified if it stretched beyond the state's list of protected classes.

Several UNL students were in favor of making workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation illegal in Omaha and across the state — none of six interviews disagreed with that point. Most were surprised to learn that it wasn't illegal in the first place.

"That actually bothers me a lot," said Sylas Bailey, a sophomore Spanish and international studies major from O'Neill, a town in northern Nebraska. "Saying ‘No, we have to do it all at once' is a step backward, because it makes it less likely."

Bailey and others were unsure if enough momentum for a change would build on its own.

"It's easier to change something one city at a time, as opposed to statewide," said Jasmyn McAlister, a sophomore psychology and Spanish major who didn't know beforehand that people could be fired because of their sexual orientation.

She called Gray's idea a "necessary change." One thing that wasn't necessary, she said, was McCoy's bill.

"I don't think it should be necessary to be statewide, because you can do it statewide regardless," McAlister said.

This isn't the first time Gray has tried to add the LGBT community to Omaha's non-discrimination statutes. Another proposal in late 2010 was rejected by the Omaha City Council in a split 3-3 vote with one abstention. Before that, Omaha's State Sen. Ernie Chambers had proposed a similar change in 2007.

Through the years, those measures' opponents have questioned the need for a new protected class. There's no way of knowing how big of a problem housing or employment discrimination based on sexual orientation is, because the state doesn't have a legal reason to track complaints. But in a strongly conservative state, Tetreault said, it's probably happening. She called the bill's potential impact "chilling."