The Senate held a hearing on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) today, "which is a top priority of the Obama Administration and the Justice Department," according to the Justice Deparment's blog. ENDA would permit legal action against employers determined to have descriminated against an employee for their sexual orientation or gender identity.

At today's hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez of the Civil Right Division testified about the plight of "our lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender brothers and sisters" in the workplace:

No American should be denied a job or the opportunity to earn promotions, pay raises and other benefits of employment because of his or her sexual orientation or gender identity, which have no bearing on work performance. No one should be fired because he or she is gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. Period. 

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Protecting valued members of our workforce from discrimination should not be left to a patchwork of state and local laws that leaves large gaps in coverage. Discrimination in my home state of Maryland is just as wrong as discrimination in Montana.

Preliminary data from a recent survey by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) and the National Center for Transgender Equality indicate that members of the LGBT community are not uncommonly the targets of workplace discrimination. "[T]ransgender people experience unemployment at double the rate of the general population," writes NGLTF's Jaime Grant in The Hill. "Predictably, the study shows that high unemployment correlates with poverty, housing insecurity and poor health care access for transgender people."