Jason Collins’s decision to come out as the first gay male athlete who is active in a major-league sport generated mostly cheers from league executives, players, and fans this week. But it remains to be seen how the move will affect the career of the 12-year veteran of the National Basketball Association, now a free agent. After all, he essentially came out at the office, and there aren’t as many rules protecting homosexual workers as you might think.
Carmelyn Malalis, who co-chairs Outten & Golden’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Workplace Rights Practice Group, notes that we don’t yet live in a perfect world. Discrimination against homosexuals is still prevalent in the U.S. And in most states there is no clear guidance for employers as to how to handle it in the workplace.
But Malalis was pleased by Collins’s step. “I think particularly in the area of men’s sports, people have been talking about it as the final frontier of coming out,” she says.
The New York lawyer represents plaintiffs in employment matters. She has also seen men reluctant to come out in other sectors, particularly the entertainment industry, advertising, and financial services. Generally speaking, however, the reality for employers, she says, is that more people are coming out in the workplace. ”
There is currently no federal law prohibiting workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation. The Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) has been introduced without success in Congress almost every session since 1994; the latest version of the proposed legislation was introduced in the House and Senate last week.
Malalis’s advice to employers would be to proceed as if such a law were already in effect. Employers, to be on the safe side, should be thinking about ENDA as being an eventuality, ” she says.
In a growing number of jurisdictions, state laws already offer protections that the federal law does not. According to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), 21 states and the District of Columbia currently have laws … prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation.
“Passing ENDA would be a wonderful moment for LGBT employees, and for the country generally, because it would provide for a lot more clarity and consistency,” says Malalis. From the corporate perspective, she says, it’s onerous to maintain different types of benefit systems for employees in different states, and anyway, a lot of employers generally want to do the right thing. ”
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