Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I join my colleagues today, in the middle of Pride Month, to celebrate the Supreme Court's landmark decision this week in Bostock v. Clayton County, protecting LGBTQ rights and protecting people from discrimination in the workplace, and to urge all of our colleagues to secure and extend those protections by passing the Equality Act.

Something else big happened in the Supreme Court, and that was today, with the Supreme Court's decision on DACA, on Dreamers--allowing them to stay in this country and asking the administration to open up the application process for citizenship. That is relevant because it is about civil rights, but it is also relevant because the Supreme Court-- this conservative Court--has had to step in because this body has not been doing what it should have been: passing the Equality Act and passing comprehensive immigration reform. So let us remember that as we celebrate the decision in the Bostock case and as we move toward equality.

I thank Senators Merkley, Baldwin, and Booker for their leadership on this important bill and for bringing us together today.

Over the last few decades, we have made progress in the fight for equality. We have stood up for what is right, and we have worked hard to make this a country in which people can safely, proudly, and legally love whom they love. It was not long ago when a person could be prosecuted for being gay and when don't ask, don't tell was the law of the land--when I came to the U.S. Senate--and when States were permitted to deny LGBTQ couples the right to get married under the Defense of Marriage Act.

This week, our country took an important step forward with the Supreme Court's decision that recognizes that the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employers from firing employees because of sex, protects LGBTQ people in the workplace.

We can celebrate today that justice was delivered for Aimee Stephens, who was fired when she informed her employer that she was transgender, and for Donald Zarda and Gerald Bostock, who were fired when their employers learned they were gay.

But, of course, this is more than about three people. As Mr. Bostock said, ``This fight became about so much more than me.'' Their courage to stand up in the face of injustice will forever change this country for millions of LGBTQ people and their families, and it makes our country a more just nation.

Although the Court's decision is a landmark victory, we still have miles to go because it is not right when the Commander in Chief tells brave transgender Americans who want to serve and protect our country in our military that they are not welcome; it is not right when this administration is trying to take away the hard-won rights of LGBTQ people in healthcare and education; and it is not right that you can drive across the United States on a cross-country trip and find that the laws and protections could be different at every rest stop.

That is why I was proud to cosponsor, on the day it was introduced, the bipartisan Equality Act with my colleagues who are here today, and it is why I am calling on our colleagues across the aisle to pass this bill.

This bill, which already passed the House by a vote of 236 to 173, will go a long way in protecting LGBTQ Americans from discrimination. The Equality Act would build on the Supreme Court's decision and make nondiscrimination protections consistent and explicit. It would amend laws like the Civil Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, and Federal employment laws to ensure that all Americans, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity, have equal access to housing, education, and federally funded programs.

We should not wait any longer to extend these protections, for nearly two-thirds of LGBTQ Americans report experiencing discrimination in their personal lives. These problems are compounded by race and income, especially for trans women of color. Yet it has been over 1 year since this bill passed the House.

In 2000, when I was the county attorney in our largest county in Minnesota, I was invited to the White House to introduce President Bill Clinton at an event to urge the passage of hate crimes legislation. We had had an African-American young man who had been shot by a guy who had said that he had wanted to go out and kill someone on Martin Luther King Day. That happened. We had had an employee who had gotten beaten with a board by the foreman at his workplace for his simply speaking Spanish. I had taken on a number of these crimes, so I had been invited by the President to urge Congress to pass the Matthew Shepard hate crimes legislation, which covered a wide range of hate crimes.

During that event at the White House--my first time ever there--I got to meet the investigators in the Matthew Shepard case. They were these two burly cops from Wyoming, and they talked about the fact that until that investigation--I think Senator Baldwin is nodding her head and has probably met them as well--they really hadn't thought about what Matthew Shepard's life was like or the lives of other LGBTQ people. Then, as they started to investigate what had happened--and we all remember how he was left hanging on a fence post, and the first people who saw him thought he was a scarecrow--these investigators, these police officers, got to know the family and the case. They got to know his mom, and they got to know his friends. During the course of their investigation, as they began to understand what life was like for Matthew Shepard, their own lives were changed.

I think this is happening right now around this country after the murder of George Floyd in my State, and I know it has been happening when it comes to our LGBTQ community. That is why, on that day way back, we were in the White House to introduce that bill. Nearly 10 years after that event at the White House, during my first year as a U.S. Senator, I got to be one of the deciding votes to finally pass that hate crimes bill.

So I say to my colleagues who are fighting for justice, who are fighting for justice in policing, who are fighting for justice in our LGBTQ community, who are fighting for justice for our immigrants, the change will happen, but we can't wait 10 years for this change to happen. The people of this country are demanding that it happen now. We need to come together and finally pass the Equality Act and do all of these other good things that are right here, that are right on our desks. We should do them immediately--not next year--and not wait.

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