The only Republican to co-sponsor the Equality Act in 2021 is no longer backing the landmark LGBTQ+ civil rights bill.
In comments to the Washington Blade, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she did not plan to formally sign onto the bill ahead of its coming reintroduction in the Senate. The “moderate” lawmaker led a bipartisan coalition of Senators calling for the Equality Act’s passage following the Supreme Court’s historic June 2020 ruling on LGBTQ+ employment discrimination. In a letter to then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Collins and her colleagues urged that the “need for these critical protections is clear.”
But Collins said that her feelings on the legislation have since changed in the eight months since. According to the Blade, the Senator cited unspecified “changes she had sought” to the Equality Act that were not adopted in the 2021 iteration of the bill.
“There were certain provisions of the Equality Act which needed revision,” she said on Tuesday.
While Collins declined to offer more information to explain her flip-flop, the LGBTQ+ newspaper suggested that there may have been a personal reason for pulling her support of the legislation. The Human Rights Campaign, which had previously endorsed Collins, instead backed her Democratic challenger, Sara Gideon, in an ultimately unsuccessful bid to unseat the incumbent in the 2020 election.
“Unfortunately the commitments that were made to me were not [given] last year,” Collins said.
The Senator’s office did not respond to a request for comment regarding whether she still planned to vote in favor of the Equality Act down the line. As them. previously reported, losing key Republican swing votes could jeopardize the bill’s prospects: To avoid a filibuster in the evenly divided Senate, Democrats would need to flip at least 10 conservatives, and Collins was among the most likely candidates. In addition to last year’s letter, she has previously backed LGBTQ+ inclusive hate crimes laws and opposed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
In fact, Collins has supported LGBTQ+ nondiscrimination laws for most of her Congressional career. She came out in favor of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) when it was put forward in 2009 and formally signed on as a co-sponsor of the legislation four years later.
The Equality Act is essentially an expansion of that very same bill. Whereas ENDA pertained solely to LGBTQ+ discrimination in workplace settings, the Equality Act extends those protections to areas like housing, education, health care, federal funding, credit, public accommodations, and even jury duty. The legislation, which was introduced by Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) in the House and Sen. Jeff Merkley in the Senate (D-Ore.), passed the House for the first time in its history last year.
While President Joe Biden has called for the Equality Act to be signed into law in his first 100 days in office, that may be easier said than done. Along with Collins’ recent comments, another Senate conservative, Mitt Romney (R-Utah), announced his opposition to the legislation last week. He claimed the proposal fails to properly accommodate people of faith.
“Sen. Romney believes that strong religious liberty protections are essential to any legislation on this issue, and since those provisions are absent from this particular bill, he is not able to support it,” a Romney spokesperson told the Blade last Tuesday.
Although the bill faces an uphill battle, all hope is not lost. The LGBTQ+ publication Boston Spirit cites a handful of Senators as possible swing votes, including Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Richard Burr (R-N.C.), and Rob Portman (R-Ohio). Toomey, Tillis, and Burr have all supported pro-LGBTQ+ legislation in the past, while Portman has a gay son.
Other Republicans remain tight-lipped about their views regarding the Equality Act. When approached by the Blade, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) claimed they hadn’t read it. “I don’t know what’s in it,” Rubio said, adding that “no one’s talked to me about it.”
The Equality Act was reintroduced in the House last week and is expected to be put forward in the Senate within the coming days.
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