Robin Kelly on Civil Rights

Recognize 1961 Freedom Riders against segregated buses.

Congressional summary:: A BILL to award a Congressional Gold Medal to the Freedom Riders, collectively, in recognition of their unique contribution to Civil Rights, which inspired a revolutionary movement for equality in interstate travel. The Congress finds the following:

• In 1960, the Supreme Court ruled in Boynton v. Virginia that segregated bus and rail stations were unconstitutional.
• The rigid system of racial segregation that prevailed in the United States during the 1960s did not permit a Black person to sit next to a White person on any bus traveling through interstate commerce and in most locations in the South. Bus stations had 'Whites Only' waiting areas and Blacks were not permitted to wait in those areas despite the Supreme Court making it the law of the land.
• The Freedom Riders, with the intent to end segregation in public transportation throughout the South, paved the way for full racial integration of the US transit system. They overcame prejudice, discrimination, and violence. They sparked a movement that changed our Nation.
• The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) selected 13 volunteers for nonviolent response training. The Freedom Riders used their strategies of nonviolence to challenge the South's Jim Crow laws directly by riding from Washington DC to New Orleans.
• On the morning of May 4, 1961, the 13 Freedom Riders, comprised of 7 Blacks and 6 Whites, boarded two buses, with Blacks and Whites seated together.
• Initially, the Freedom Riders had encountered only minor clashes until a stop in South Carolina. In Rock Hill, an angry mob severely beat John Lewis, now a Congressman from Georgia, when he entered the bus station. Additional mobs fought the group in Alabama and Mississippi.

Don't elevate gender identity as a protected class.

Heritage Action Summary: The Maloney Amendment would ratify President Obama's 2014 executive order barring federal contractors from what it describes as "discrimination" on the basis of "sexual orientation and gender identity" in their private employment policies. In practice, it would have required federal contractors to grant biologically male employees who identify as women unfettered access to women's lockers, showers, and bathrooms.

Heritage Foundation recommendation to vote NO: (5/25/2016): Congress should not be elevating sexual orientation and gender identity as a protected class garnering special legal privileges, which is the intent of the Maloney Amendment. The Maloney Amendment constitutes bad policy that unnecessarily regulates businesses. It risks undoing longstanding protections in civil rights law and makes clear that the president's orders are not exempt from them.

ACLU recommendation to vote YES: (5/11/2016): We see today claims to a right to discriminate--by refusing to provide services to LGBT people--based on religious objections. Claiming a right to discriminate in the name of religion is not new. In the 1960s, we saw objections to laws requiring integration in restaurants because of sincerely held beliefs that God wanted the races to be separate. We saw religiously affiliated universities refuse to admit students who engaged in interracial dating. In those cases, we recognized that requiring integration was not about violating religious liberty; it was about ensuring fairness. It's no different today.

Religious freedom in America means that we all have a right to our religious beliefs, but this does not give us the right to use our religion to impose those beliefs on others.

Legislative outcome: Amendment passed by the House 223-195-15 4/26/16; overall bill H.R.5055 failed 112-305-16 on 5/26/2016