ACLU

by Jeremy Leaming

Once again lawmakers in Congress have introduced legislation intended to advance equality for LGBT people, this time with a few more Republicans on board and in an atmosphere of heightened public support.

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) would prohibit employers from discriminating against people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. As noted earlier this week, other variations of ENDA have languished in past congressional sessions. But the effort – to outlaw employment discrimination of LGBT people – is integral to advancing equality. The U.S. Supreme Court is considering cases involving marriage equality and nine states and the District of Columbia recognize same-sex marriages. Rhode Island and Delaware state lawmakers are considering legislation to allow same-sex couples to wed. (Rhode Island’s Senate has approved a marriage equality bill.)

So while there has been positive movement on marriage equality -- though a setback could be forthcoming depending on the how the Roberts Court handles the cases before it – efforts to bar employment discrimination against LGBT persons have seen more mixed results. As the ACLU notes more than 30 states include laws that fail to provide LGBT people solid protection from employment discrimination.

But Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) in a press statement announcing the introduction of ENDA sounded an upbeat note, saying that “bipartisan coalitions” in both chambers are supporting the measure. Merkley’s statement concludes, “In a sign of the growing momentum to end discrimination against LGBT Americans, the Senate sponsors expect the Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee” to take action on the legislation in this Congress.

The ACLU, Lambda Legal, the National Center for Lesbian Rights and the Transgender Law Center issued a statement today concluding, in part, that in a “country that values fairness and equal treatment under the law, we believe the current situation is unacceptable.” That situation centers on the fact that there remain far too many states without protections against employment discrimination of LGBT people.

by Jeremy Leaming

The DOJ white paper advancing broad and opaque arguments for the executive branch to kill U.S. citizens thought to be connected with Al Qaeda is a “radical jurisprudential notion,” Salon’s David Sirota writes. He calls the jurisprudential notion “Too Big to Curtail.”

That moniker, he continues, “is the most accurate label to describe the machinery of the government’s ever-expanding drone war.”

The DOJ’s white paper concludes three conditions must be met for the federal government to kill a U.S. citizen who is integral to Al Qaeda or “an associated force of” of the terrorist group without violating the Constitution. They require a high-ranking federal official who says the person targeted for killing is an “imminent threat to the country,” capturing the person is “infeasible,” and the lethal operation doesn’t violate laws governing use of force during war time.

Sirota says the “most harrowing takeaway” from the DOJ document is that the killing of a U.S. citizen abroad can be made by a high-ranking government official even if there is no “clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.”

Essentially, Sirota continues, the white paper maintains that the “president doesn’t actually need evidence to order someone’s death.” 

The Dish in a post dubbed, “The Executive As Executioner,” includes comment from an array of folks, including the ACLU’s Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer.