Up until only a few years ago, it was legal in New York State to fire someone from their job, refuse to rent them an apartment or deny them service in a restaurant simply because they were (or appeared to be) lesbian, gay or bisexual. This changed on January 16, 2003, when New York’s Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act (SONDA) went into effect, making it illegal across the state for anyone to be discriminated against in employment, housing, credit, education and public accommodations because of their real or perceived sexual orientation.
The road to achieve a state “gay rights law” (as it was originally called) began in the early 1970s. In fact, the Assembly bill number of the legislation that was finally passed into law was A.1971, to commemorate the year that sexual orientation non-discrimination legislation was first introduced. Throughout the 70s and 80s, a number of New York localities – beginning in 1974 with the Village of Alfred (population 1,000) – began passing their own local ordinances outlawing anti-gay discrimination.
The Empire State Pride Agenda was formed in 1990 with the specific top legislative priority of passing a state law to prohibit anti-gay discrimination. On February 1, 1993, the Assembly passed SONDA for the first time by a vote of 90-50, with 81 Democrats and 9 Republicans voting for it, and 14 Democrats and 36 Republicans voting against it.
When SONDA was finally passed by the State Senate for the first time on December 17, 2002, by a bipartisan vote of 34 – 26, it had already become somewhat outdated, most notably by the fact that it did not explicitly include gender identity and expression. Its enactment was still a major legal, political and cultural victory, creating substantial protections for LGBT people across the state and creating the necessary foundation for future victories to come.
From a legal standpoint, the measure merely added two words – “sexual orientation” – to the already existing New York State Human Rights Law that already prohibited discrimination based on race, sex, creed, color, national origin, disability, age and marital status. It did not create any “special rights,” but simply mandated equal treatment and created a level playing field for all citizens. It also did not alter the religious exemptions that exist in the Human Rights Law, so religious institutions still retain their First Amendment right to hire and fire according to the tenets of their religion. Likewise, it maintained the Human Rights Law exemption for single-family and owner-occupied two family homes, and small businesses with fewer than four employees.
SONDA remains significant because there is still no national law prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity and expression, although efforts are underway to pass a comprehensive federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) to outlaw discrimination by the nation’s employers on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. As a result, the only protection LGBT Americans have from discrimination comes from state and local laws. A majority of states still do not have such laws, meaning that in most of the nation, it is still perfectly legal for an employer or landlord to say “lesbians need not apply,” or for the manager of a movie theater to say, “We don’t sell tickets to gays like you.”
The basic civil rights protections of SONDA are what prevent such blatant discrimination from being allowed here in New York State, and they highlight the need for similarly explicit statewide protections to be passed for transgender New Yorkers through the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA).