LITTLE ROCK -- The Pulaski County Quorum Court will consider an ordinance Tuesday establishing nondiscrimination policies for conducting business and amend the personnel policy to include protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and genetic information.
Justice of the Peace Tyler Denton, D-Little Rock, and Amanda Mitchell, county attorney, said the language in the ordinance is meant to mirror an April ordinance passed by the Little Rock Board of Directors they believe doesn't violate Act 137, passed this session by the Arkansas Legislature.
The act prohibits counties and municipalities from expanding nondiscrimination laws beyond what the state's civil-rights act allows.
The Little Rock ordinance expanded the city's nondiscrimination policy with city contractors to include sexual orientation, gender identity and genetic information.
"We just want to piggyback on the tremendous energy and momentum that the city of Little Rock has created," Denton said.
The Pulaski County ordinance establishes a nondiscrimination policy for contractors and services offered by the county and expands on the nondiscrimination clause in personnel policy, which protects people from being discriminated against for religious opinions or affiliations, age, race, sex, national origin, handicaps, disabilities or other nonmerit factors.
Under the ordinance, that would expand to include sexual orientation, gender identity and genetic information.
The proposed ordinance wouldn't expand the law into private businesses or organizations not specifically engaged in a contract with the county.
Denton's ordinance has the support of at least six other justices of the peace who signed on as co-sponsors; Barry Hyde, county judge; and Jay Chesshir, Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce president and chief executive officer.
"We're trying to modernize this language and bring it up to 2015 societal practices and have it just be a little more current with the way things are," said Denton, noting the ordinance is intended to be proactive, not necessarily to fix existing discrimination.
But Justice of the Peace Luke McCoy, R-Sherwood, said he'll fight the ordinance because it is unnecessary and violates Act 137.
McCoy works for the conservative Family Council in Little Rock but said he could speak only in his capacity as a justice of the peace. One of the Family Council's core issues is opposing same-sex marriage.
"I think it's an ordinance finding a problem instead of solving a problem," McCoy said.
McCoy said he believes civil-rights laws protected enough classes of people and adding more opens the door to confusing, nonuniform policies.
"Women's suffrage was so much more tragic than homosexuality," he said. "I just don't think homosexuals should be a protected class."
Family Council President Jerry Cox said the ordinance could have legal problems, but his organization opposes the ordinance fundamentally because it would expand protections to include a group he doesn't think faces systemic discrimination.
"We don't create more protected classes just because we find one or two or three or even half a dozen cases where a person has been mistreated," he said. "I'm sure if you looked around, you could find people who are overweight [and] you would find people who say they've been discriminated against, and yet we don't put body weight into the law as protected class. If you look at the civil-rights law, it was done to correct a serious wrong done to [a class of people] for possibly generations."
Hyde said he doesn't believe the ordinance suddenly would change anything, but the ordinance would be a positive for the community.
"I don't think this is any immediate change in who we do business [with] or how we interact with our employees," he said. "I think this is purely because there's been so much attention given to this issue in the last months. It's important to update and make sure our statement is very clear to vendors, the public, potential investors that we are a community that is not going to discriminate against people."
Pulaski County is the first county in the state to pursue such an ordinance since Fayetteville's City Council captured the state's attention by expanding its nondiscrimination law to include LGBT people, affecting all businesses in the city.
That law was overturned by a voter referendum. Early voting is under way for a similar referendum in Eureka Springs on that town's expanded nondiscrimination law approved by the City Council in February. Election Day is Tuesday.
Since state legislators passed Act 137 this spring, Little Rock and Hot Springs have passed expanded nondiscrimination laws that include city contractors. Those ordinances mean the city can't discriminate against potential vendors based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and city contractors can't discriminate against LGBT people in the hiring process for the work they conduct with the cities.
NW News on 05/08/2015