Almost half of LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. have experienced workplace discrimination at some point in their lives, according to a new report.
A Tuesday study published by The Williams Institute additionally found that nearly 9% of LGBTQ+ workers said they had been fired or denied employment in the past year due to their LGBTQ+ identity. The number was even higher for LGBTQ+ people of color, over 11% of whom reported having faced unfair employment or hiring practices.
The University of California, Los Angeles think tank also found that transgender people face shocking rates of bias on the job. Almost half of trans workers — 48.8% — said they had been fired or not hired due to their gender identity. Additionally, over 22% of trans respondents said they had been sexually harassed within the past five years, compared to the approximately 12% of queer, cisgender people who said the same.
Many trans workers also reported staying closeted to protect themselves. Half of respondents said they are not out to their supervisors, and 25.8% reported not being out to any of their co-workers. Additionally, over 40% said they have engaged in behaviors like changing their voice, clothing, or which bathroom they use to hide their identity.
The report, which surveyed 935 LGBTQ+ adults, is one of the first to reflect the prevalence of LGBTQ+ job discrimination both during the COVID-19 pandemic and since the Supreme Court’s June 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County. In a 6-3 ruling, judges ruled that it is illegal for employers to discriminate based on sexual orientation and gender identity under federal civil rights laws.
Brad Sears, executive director of The Williams Institute, said its team found the high rates discrimination in the past year surprising. Researchers thought the combination of the Bostock decision outlawing discrimination and the pressures of the pandemic would have led to increased camaraderie in the workplace.
“We thought a lot of companies and workers would be coming together in a new way,” Sears, who was the lead author on the report, told NBC News.
In addition to being fired or not hired due to their LGBTQ+ identity, respondents also reported facing other forms of discrimination, including having their hours reduced, not getting a raise, being misgendered, and not getting promoted. A lesbian respondent, for instance, told The Williams Institute that her boss fired her when she wouldn’t go out with him.
Religion also proved to be a large motivating factor for workplace discrimination: 57% of LGBTQ+ workers who reported being harassed or discriminated against said the person who mistreated them cited religious beliefs as their reason for doing so. A transgender respondent said she was “assaulted by a co-worker who told me he was enacting ‘God’s will’ on me,” while a bisexual woman claimed she was told that she “was going to hell during a job interview for liking women.”
The study’s findings underscore the dire need to pass the Equality Act, which would create sweeping federal protections for the LGBTQ+ community in areas like housing, education, and health care, in addition to shoring up the employment protections granted by Bostock. In February, the long-awaited legislation passed the House and advanced to the Senate, where it stalled due to a lack of GOP support. Without the elimination of the filibuster, the landmark legislation would need 60 votes to pass, meaning it would need to garner at least 10 Republican votes.
“Bostock was a general pronouncement against discrimination,” Sears said. “The Equality Act gets into the details of the statutes and will provide clear guidance that these behaviors are against the law.”
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has also conducted several studies examining the outsized economic impact of the pandemic on LGBTQ+ people. One such report found that 30% of LGBTQ+ employees reported a reduction in work hours after the pandemic began, compared to 22% of the general population. It’s unclear how much of that phenomenon is due to the fact that queer and transgender people disproprtionately work in industries impacted by COVID-19, such as retail and the service industry, and how much is linked to their LGBTQ+ identities.
If nothing else, these disappointing figures prove that Bostock was only the beginning of the fight for LGBTQ+ equality in the workplace.
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