Barack Obama: President of the United States, and Huffington Post blogger. In a post on Sunday night, Obama made the case for Congress to finally pass ENDA, otherwise known as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. The measure would protect gay and transgender employees from discrimination on the basis of their orientation or gender identity, and it goes up for a vote in the Senate Monday night. Speaking of that lack of protection for LGBT Americans, the president wrote: “It’s offensive. It’s wrong. And it needs to stop, because in the United States of America, who you are and who you love should never be a fireable offense.”
Citing broad support for the bill among Americans, Obama argues that ENDA “ought to be the law of the land.” According to a Washington Post analysis, the president is correct about that broad support, found in a majority of voters in all 50 states of the nation. But that doesn’t mean it will pass Congress. In fact, ENDA has failed to do just that, many many times before. The first iteration of ENDA was in 1974. In its many variations — for instance, sometimes with protections for transgendered Americans, sometimes without — it has failed to pass several times since then.