The Recorder
September 23, 1996, Monday
STATE BAR PROMOTES POLICIES COUNTERING GAY DISCRIMINATION
BYLINE: Mike McKee
Imagine being gay and finding out that a potential employer considers
your sexual orientation a "disability -- a mental and emotional problem
of obvious magnitude."
Or imagine working at a place pervaded with jokes about "faggots" and
"dykes" -- humor not likely to be tolerated by management if it was aimed
at women or ethnic minorities.
Well, things like that happen frequently -- and at law firms --
according to a 2-year-old Los Angeles County Bar Association study that
helped persuade the State Bar to take a stand on behalf of its gay and
lesbian members.
On Sept. 7, the State Bar Board of Governors unanimously approved six
recommendations that its members hope will make employers aware that gays
and lesbians face significant barriers in the law firm culture.
The board's action -- which made the State Bar the first mandatory
bar to adopt an explicit policy against such bias -- asks firms and other
employers to implement policies that discourage verbal harassment of
gays; improve grievance procedures; allow gay lawyers to participate in
hiring; prevent work assignments and promotions from being based on
clients' perceptions of gays; provide domestic partner benefits; and
maintain work environments where gay employees don't have to be closeted.
The recommendations were submitted to the Board of Governors by the
Bar's Standing Committee on Sexual Orientation Discrimination, which was
formed in 1993.
Gay and lesbian attorneys are hailing the action as a milestone, even
though state law, California case law and the Bar's own Rules of
Professional Conduct already prohibit discrimination based on sexual
orientation.
"It's an important statement by the State Bar to tell lawyers you
aren't supposed to discriminate ," said Susan Gelmis, a staff attorney
for the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and former chairwoman of the
Bar's sexual orientation discrimination committee.
Adds current committee chairman Wayne Braveman, a partner in the L.A.
office of Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe: "It really does put the
institutional imprimatur of the State Bar behind a set of somewhat more
specific recommendations, and does serve to remind law firms and other
legal employers that they do have this legal obligation."
A 1991 gay discrimination study by the Bar Association of San
Francisco also helped prompt the Bar's action, but it was the L.A. study
-- with anecdotal evidence of homophobia and shocking written responses
by employers -- that swayed the board.
"The L.A. report is extraordinarily comprehensive and paints an
alarming picture for gay attorneys," the Bar's Committee on Sexual
Orientation Discrimination reported. "Not only is discrimination
extensive, its impact is minimized by law firms and employers. . . .
Almost 68 percent of the lesbian attorneys and 58.3 percent of the gay
attorneys reported witnessing or experiencing anti-gay discrimination in
Los Angeles County."
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