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In most states, a landlord can evict someone simply because he is gay — and it would be totally legal to do so.
The cause isn't a religious freedom law like the one that triggered a national firestorm in Indiana, which critics said would enable discrimination on religious grounds. Instead, 31 states, including Indiana, have long allowed discrimination against LGBT people because they don't include sexual orientation or gender identity in existing civil rights statutes. In these states, it's not religious freedom laws that allow discrimination; it's the lack of civil rights laws.
"If there's a 'license to discriminate,'" Robin Wilson, a law professor at the University of Illinois who helped write Utah's nondiscrimination law, said, "it's the fact that the state hasn't said this is an unacceptable basis for saying no to people."
Thirty-one states don't ban discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in the workplace, housing, or public accommodations (hotels, restaurants, and other places that serve the general public).
As a result, more than half of LGBT Americans, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBT advocacy group, live in a state where an employer can legally fire someone because he's gay, a landlord can legally evict someone because she's lesbian, and a hotel manager can legally deny service to someone who's transgender — for no reason other than the person's sexual orientation or gender identity.
Currently, 19 states ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, while three additional states ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. Some other states protect public but not private employees from discrimination. Many municipalities have nondiscrimination laws that only apply within their local borders, even in states that don't have such laws. And some companies prohibit discrimination in their own policies.
