The title of this post is taken from Derrick Bell's book from the 1980s. It discusses the failure of civil rights law to save African-Americans.

When the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 was passed, do you think that discrimination against African-Americans vanished the day after? It did not, and it has still not. There is still much discrimination, and the EEOC receives 90,000 complaints a year, only a fraction of which provide relief to the complainant. More students sit in more segregated classrooms now than did at the heyday of Jim Crow. There are carefully done studies demonstrating this fact. African-Americans are disproportionately found in the lower 40% of the socio-economic strata, under the poverty level, and in prisons.

The 13th Amendment to the Constitution sought to make African Americans equal. It did not. The 14th Amendment sought to do it. It did not. The 15th Amendment sought to do it. It did not.

Rights for African-Americans has been a slow process.

Does this mean that we should abandon law altogether? No, for law is a very, very helpful tool in preventing some overt discrimination and in changing the hearts and minds of the youngest generation, who will grow up to understand that discrimination is wrong. But it's not a magic bullet.

To those who say "FULL EQUALITY NOW," I say "YES!" but don't think that language on a piece of paper in Congress is going to do that. Regardless of what form of civil rights is passed in law, it is going to take decades of hard work to make that a reality for most LGBT citizens.

Indiana Equality's Arguments Against ENDA Do Not Add Up

1. Indiana Equality says only a bill amending the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and adding sexual orientation and gender identity is full equality. It says we need housing and education and credit protections because they are important to employment rights.

But this is legislation about employment rights. Housing and credit and whatnot are not directly associated with employment or employment rights. This argument also ignores the fact that, historically, the broader civil rights community has not been willing to open up the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to add in other protected groups because there is a significant danger that other amendments would be demanded that are deleterious to currently protected groups. Is there a real danger of this now, in the Democratically-controlled Congress? No, but the path has been set and re-formulating the whole plan now will require co-ordinating with our allies in the broader civil rights and labor movements. They would need to be convinced. Some in that camp do not see the association between racial discrimination and sexual orientation discrimination. There are so many people involved in such an undertaking that it would mean delaying civil rights action for years.

2. Indiana Equality says that there are legal consequences to ENDA being created as a separate section of the Federal Code. It says we won't get the benefit of prior case precedents giving broad protections from the civil rights laws.

This is not the case. In fact, most new laws are included in new sections. Section 10(b) of the 2007 bill says the procedures and remedies applicable to a claim alleged by an individual for a violation are to be the same as title VII. I will have to wait and see whether the 2009 bill has something similar, but if it does, Indiana Equality's argument falls flat. All civil rights statutes are generally considered by court to be remedying discrimination, and therefore they are construed broadly to give more protection. It is my assumption that the maxim of statutory interpretation that broadly construes remedial statutes will apply to ENDA as much as any other civil rights statute seeing to remedy discrimination.

In addition, it is well known that conservative Reagan and Bush-era judges have used "textualism" and other restrictive judicial philosophies to narrow the effects of Title VII. ENDA is no less and no more vulnerable to this problem. Law professors who are experts in the subject tend to agree that Title VII has been severely narrowed by the judiciary over the past 40 years. The Equal Pay Act of 1963, passed in the session before the Civil Rights Act, has been nearly useless in securing equal pay for equal work based on gender because of judges construing it narrowly. ENDA is going to be subject to narrowing by the courts whether it is a stand alone, or inserted as an amendment into the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

3. Indiana Equality says the small business and religious exemptions are too broad.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 covers employers with 15 or more employees. ENDA covers employers with 15 or more employees.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 contains exemptions for religious organizations. Here is the text of the religious exemption from the 2007 ENDA legislation (see version 3) as passed by the House: "This Act shall not apply to a corporation, association, educational institution, or society that is exempt from the religious discrimination provisions of title VII of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 pursuant to section 702(a) or 703(e)(2) of such Act (42 U.S.C. 2000e-1(a); 2000e-2(e)(2))."

Assuming similar language in the new version, ENDA is no worse than the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on these points.

4. Indiana Equality says that ENDA should allow "disparate impact" claims.

True, but I'm not so concerned. Those claims are difficult and very expensive to litigate. This claim involves situations where there is no open discrimination, but some action or rule of the workplace imposes a greater burden on a protected group more than all others. For example, a workplace imposes a rule that employees under a certain height are disqualified from certain types of work regardless of ability to do the job. This does not directly discriminate on the basis of sex, but it will have a disproportionate impact on women. Or an workplace imposes a test for promotion that contains elements that are not job related, and only White applicants pass the test. These are disparate impact cases.

Expensive expert witnesses and mathematical models are often needed to demonstrate the statistical implications. I note that, in the context of gender identity, and, I daresay, sexual orientation, identification of the relevant group to look at for the discriminatory "impact" is confusing, as demonstrated by the opinions in the recent cases of Schroer and Creed. "Disparate impact" lawsuits may or may not be helpful to gay and transgender employees.

It Is Better To Light One Candle, Than To Curse The Darkness

I support full equality. I support it now. However, I am also wise to the age-old trap of making perfection into the enemy of that which is good.

Progress, not perfection.

Law will not save us.

People will save us. People who have learned about the wrongs of discrimination through the process of passing a law and through the public education that comes from reading about the legal cases that will be brought in the law's wake, and from hearing about cases that succeed and cases that fail. From that comes waking from the false consciousness that says it is okay to oppress people because they are different.

Better language in a law will not save us.

It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.