No Virginia statute prohibits employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. State employees cannot enroll their partners in their workplace insurance plans. In fact, Virginia is the only state to forbid even private companies, unless self-insured, from extending health insurance benefits to unmarried couples.

In 1982 Wisconsin became the first state to pass a comprehensive statute prohibiting sexual orientation discrimination; and its cities, Madison and Milwaukee, recently expanded their local ordinances to prohibit employment and housing discrimination based on gender identity. On the other hand, Wisconsin singled out gays and lesbians from other protected groups when it denied affirmative action programs to remedy sexual orientation discrimination in its landmark 1982 legislation; Milwaukee’s Equal Rights Commission, charged with receiving and reviewing complaints of private employer discrimination, has not operated for five years; and Wisconsin’s statewide employment discrimination statute excludes gender identity protection and does not provide for a private right of action.

A Connecticut statute bans employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. No Connecticut statutes prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression. In November 2000, the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities – the agency responsible for administering the anti-discrimination statutes and for processing discrimination complaints – ruled that statutes prohibiting sex discrimination also banned discrimination on the basis of gender identity. Efforts to reinforce this ruling by adopting a statute covering gender identity discriminaton have so far been unsuccessful.

Under New York law, sexual orientation discrimination in the workplace is prohibited. Sexual orientation non-discrimination legislation was first introduced in New York in the early 1970s.

New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination (“LAD”) protects against discrimination based on marital status, domestic partnership status, affectional or sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, and mental or physical disability, including AIDS and HIV related illnesses.1 In addition to the LAD, New Jersey’s Administrative Code includes an anti-discrimination policy for state government employees.2 This policy also prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

While, in 1998, New Orleans became one of the earliest cities in the United States to pass a local ordinance protecting LGBT people from discrimination, repeated attempts to pass state legislation that would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression have all failed. For example, in 2008, the most recent attempt to protect LGBT rights in the employment context failed to make it out of its first committee in the state House of Representatives and the effort to pass the legislation was subsequently abandoned. In 2008, a bill was also introduced that would have just protected state employees from sexual orientation discrimination. That bill too failed to make it out of its first committee.

Until 2005, Maine had no state-wide protections against employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, nor was there an Executive Order prohibiting such discrimination. In previous years there had been efforts to prohibit the state and municipalities from adding sexual orientation to the state’s anti-discrimination law and local ordinances.

Pennsylvania has no statute that prohibits employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. There have been several attempts to amend the Human Relations Act to include prohibitions on sexual orientation and gender identity-based discrimination. To date, all have failed. There is currently an executive order that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity or expression.