communicators. it's my opinion that nda as it substantiates now would impose a substantial inconstitutional burden on religious organizations. further more it would interfere with their ability to pursue their missions. that's because in my opinion section six, the religious exemption is inefficient. i think a short legal history might be in order. the supreme court recognized the importance of religious groups. the supreme court affirmed the 501c3 for religious groups. it helped insulate those religious bodies which are

constitutionally protected from government overreaching. in 1987, corporation of the presiding bishops versus amos, the supreme court upheld the exemption in title vii. it prerermitted a mormon church eliminate them for religious grounds. adequate exemptions serve the

court from conducting in their word, quote, the kind of intrusive inquiry into religious belief that the district court engaged in this case. those kind of inquiries raise excessive intanglement clauses. this year, the supreme court in a decision upheld the so called minist ministerial exemption which they upheld because title vii failed to do so. the circuit courts recognized clergy level or minister level employees with record to their termination or demotion. those to be protected in terms of protecting the religious groups from later discrimination claims by clergy leaders.

now we come to section 6 of senate bill 811, which is the same as the last go around in 2009. here is my objection. it's an apple and oranges of senate bill 7 to title vii. it creates huge problems for future courts to iron out what organizations and under what conditions would be exempted, and which ones would not. i think that raises constitutional problems. here is the reason i think the courts will have a problem. number one, there's a two tier process of applying the religious process in title 7. number one, is it a religious corporation society institution and so forth? the courts have noted that korng never defined what those terms

mean. they've had a problem applying that to what kinds of organizations to which that exemption would apply. are they religious, are they organization? the second element in the religious exemption portion requires that the religious organization employ persons of a, quote, particular religion. it's that conduct, not the organizational structure alone, but also specific conduct relating to the employees religion that triggers the exemption process. the courts have held almost uniformly, at least recently that transgender issues, set ster stereotyping can fall under the definition of sex discrimination. under title vii they get no protection on sex

discrimination. the possibilities of confusion of analysis by future courts, i think, are tremendous. the chilling effect on religious organizations will be monumental. i would suggest we go back to the drawing board and take a loo look at the cases that i sited that exemptions must be clear and must be grounded. they must not lend themselves to confusion. they must give a wide girth. discrimination laws are important, so to are the basic fundamental liberties of religious organizations. thank you. >> let's start a round of

questions. i want to thank you for coming here today and sharing your personal experiences, putting a human face on this. we must remember that behind these statistics are real people like you. i can imagine that your personal story is not unique. through your work through the coalition can you tell us about others with discrimination with no recourse? >> i can. i get calls every single day of transgender americans that are unemployed that have been discriminated against in the workplace. one is a young woman who was

not, finally gets the job after being pushed around for several months. they keep her in the back. she's fine with that. she wants a job. then she gets promoted. she's a good employee by the general manager who hasn't seen her yet. he comes and she's immediately terminated once he sees her because she doesn't fit her expectation of what a female should look like. others are people that are harassed daily from not being able to use the bathroom in the workplace to being harassed by what they look like. what they don't look like. having coworkers with epithets at them constantly and supervisors that affirm them and it's horrendous to hear the stories that i hear on a daily basis on what people suffer and encounter to be employed to maintain a living for themselves and their family. those are just a couple of the examples that are out there.

it's overwhelming that these claims i hear every single day by somebody. it doesn't matter where they live. it doesn't have to be, if it's not mid-missouri. i hear from people all over the united states. >> thank you for being here. earlier versions have ended have not included transgender individuals. this one does. again, we've become more aware there is a gross discrimination against transgendered people in our country. i thank you for coming here and adding some more information that we need as a committee. i want to ask you, one of the suggestions, the critics have suggested there will be a flood of litigation if this bill is adopted. you said that lawsuits had the

same frequency as others. could you expand on that more? >> yes. we are able to see that the numbers of complaints are quite low when you compare the sexual orientation complaints to the race and gender. the race and sex and disability complaints and other complaints by other protected groups in the states that include sexual orientation and their nondiscrimination laws. right off the bat just those raw numbers suggest that there will are not going to be large numbers of complaints. once we adjust them for the size of the populations. as i recall about five people per 10,000 in a given state would file a complaint on average each year. if we looked at women in those state it was also about 5 to 10,000 per women and people of

color it was about 6.5. there are very similar rates that suggest that discrimination is an across the board phenomenon. that's why we have to have laws like this to give people recourse. it suggests that lgbt people are as vulnerable as many of those protected groups. it's not a flood of complaints. it's a number that you would expect given the size of the population size is relatively small. the numbers of complaints will not be huge. >> mr. charles, critics says it will need to cost the accommodations or needless litigation. your company has been operating under a policy for years and in a state, minnesota with a strong anti-discrimination law. what's been your experience about costly accommodations and needless litigation with general mills? >> mr. chairman, that's not been

our experience at all. as you've mentioned, we're fwr a state that's provided protection based on sexual orientation and gerunds identity for a number of years. we've not seen significant litigation or had to invest in accommodations. the tools of human resources are simple. communication, preparation and with those we have been able to align our personnel so that all of our employees can be respected and valued. >> thank you, mr. charles. my time is up. >> thank you to all of you for your testimony. the chair raises the question about the frequency of lawsuits. i think you responded to that with the national perspective. in oregon we have about 2,000 cases a year related to employment discrimination. of those about 40, an average of

about 40, so 1 out of 50, have been transgender or sexual identity. the rest have been related the male/female, if you will, race and so forth. is that 1 out of 50 fall into about the same category that you were referring to or slightly different? >> thank you. it does sound very proportional doing math in front of members of the senate is always a tricky thing. thinking about the size of the lgb population, that's what you would expect. that would fall into the range that we found in our study. >> thank you very much. i must say i haven't heard any businesses come back to the state legislature or come back to those of white house are involved and expressing a concern this created a flood of lawsuits. it hasn't been found.

professor, you have years of experience with employment law both as a senior member of the justice department, civil rights division and as academic. can you restate your understanding about whether it's necessary to pass in order to effectively encounter discrimination in the workplace? >> at the moment there's no clear federal remedy for the very extensive discrimination against lesbians and gays in the workplace. in most states of the union, there's no state remedy either. it's absolutely necessary to pass this law and all this law would do would be to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the basis of nondiscrimination in our well established workplace discrimination laws.

>> there are some who have criticized saying it would force businesses to create a quota system in order to protect themselves. we haven't seen that in oregon. that concern didn't materialize. as you look out in terms of the national experience, would a quota system be require d? >> it prohibits employers from establishing quotas. >> thank you very much. it's very important to have direct experience from the front line. one of the individual who is helped to illumination this issue in oregon is a woman who was a transgender person who hid

her identity to keep her job with the sheriff's department for 15 years. she worked for the sheriff's department. at one point she was named deputy of the year. she loved this job. when she stopped hiding her transgender identity, she was fired. the challenges she went through were very much like the ones you described. i think this story is repeated across the country. would you say the results of discrimination have an impact on within's pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, if you will? >> yes, i totally agree. people lose their career. it's over. once people find out you're transgender, if you choose not to hide it. also, if you choose to hide it,

limit your productivity as mr. charles indicated before because you're so fixated on prethe ending pretendsing to be something that you're not. one o i things i share is my student loan debt has quadrupled because of the unemployment and under employment. i sit here almost a 50-year-old man wondering what i'm going to do. other people are in much worse positions than i. >> thank you. >> i want to follow up on that student loan thing. thank you for holding the issue on this hearing that affects so many americans. i want to thank the witnesses for your testimony today.

because i feel so strongly, i end up having conversations about it pretty regularly. people are often surprised to learn that minnesota passed a law in 1993 that adds protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity to our human rights act. it was the first law of its kind in our nation. since then if states have followed suit. all of us that live in those state, iowa, and oregon, rhode island, colorado, connecticut, washington, vermont, i think we can all personally attest that in our states the sky hasn't fallen. in minnesota, our state is basically the same as it was before this law was passed with one small exception. about 20 or so people per year exercise their rights under this

law. that's it. that's all, 20. we still have many fortune 500 companies based in our state like general mills. i think more per capita than any other state. most minnesotans still go to church. we're still all entitled to our own personal opinions, but lgbt workers are protected from discrimination at work. we can exthe end end it to all . thank you for this critical hearing. mr. charles, thank you for being here today for your testimony. i'm very proud of minnesota and our legacy of providing protections for lgbt workers.

this has not been an issue at general mills? >> not at all. it's not been an issue for us. frequently, we talk about the cost of this legislation in terms of accommodations and litigation. there's a real cost that all u.s. companies are paying right now in terms of loss of engagement when employees are in fear. loss of productivity when they can't concentrate on bringing their hole self to their work every day and loss of talent because of these artificial barriers to entry. it's in our opinion, these are not in the best interest of general mills, companies in minnesota and companies across the state. >> are either of you familiar with the working paper by peter clenow and they call the allocation of talent. a group of economists describe their research and a surprising finding between 1960 and 2008

between 17 and 20% of u.s. economic growth could be attributed to gains made from women and people of color entering professional occupations and making better use of their talent. that's pretty stunning that workplace discrimination would have such a significant impact on our economy. the researchers caution us that it's just a rough estimate. we'll keep in mind. would you expect that a parallel economic argument could be made in regard to workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity? this is for either of you. >> that's always a dangerous thing. yes. i believe the same kind of effect that we've seen in terms of our other commitments to nondiscrimination, contributions

they've made to the economy has been real. i think we will see the same kind of things happening. the fear, the need to manage ones identity as a gay, transgender person, takes away the work that people could do to how to do the work they do as opposed to hiding. there are many lgbt people that are still not out to their co-workers. >> it's what mr. charles said about bringing your full self to work? >> yes. it remains an issue. we know that's affected by having a nondiscrimination policy where employees feel more comfortable. they are more likely to be who they are. to be out as lgbt people.

people who are out are more satisfied with their jobs. they have lower levels of ap anxiety. all of those have a tremendous economic effect. just to take the turnover example. there are many studies, i'll also give you a rang of estimates how much it costs when you lose a worker you have trained. they are also in the tens of thousands of dollars. losing a single employee because they are lgbt because they are not comfortable is something that will cost money. >> my time is up. i wanted to ask to reconcile their differences. that probably wouldn't happen within the -- >> you never know senator. >> in the three seconds i have. i do have to go to the judiciary

committee. we hold the hearing open for another week, as i understand it. i want to thank you for your testimony on this very important issue. thank you, mr. chairman for holding this. >> i guess i was surprised to learn you're a cheerios person. i thought you were more of lauk a whether you can ki charms person. >> i'm not irish. i'm sewijewish and we're famous loving cheerios. >> we're joined by senator murray also a co-sponsor of the bill. >> thank you very much. i want to thank all of our witness who is are here today to

talk about this important issue. i really believe that all americans deserve to feel secure in their workplace and discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity should not be tolerated this this country. there are currently 16 states, including my home state of washington that have enacted statutes that prohibit discrimination and as we know another five states bar discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation alone. i'm proud to say that back in 2006, our washington state legislature enacted a bill called washington law against discrimination that added protection from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity to our state's civil rights laws. it was a giant step forward for the civil rights of washington state workers. these state laws do provide important protections and should be commended. employers in a majority of states can still fire, refuse to

hire or otherwise discriminate against individuals because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. sadly, this discrimination is happening in workplaces across our country, and we've heard some of the stories from the panel today. the it really is time to put a stop to this kind of discrimination once and for all because it is unacceptable. i'm proud that i'm a co-sponsor of this legislation that will demand that their performance is based on their work, not their sexual orientation. this legislation is bipartisan support. there's no reason it can't be passed quickly through our committee. we need to work together to strengthen protections for our workers. i appreciate your having this hearing today. i want to thank all of our witnesses who are here today. i did have a couple of questions i wanted to ask.

mr. charles, i wanted to ask you that you and others have testified that nearly 90% of fortune 500 companies include nondiscrimination in their policies and 50% include gender identity. as a representative of up with of those comments, can you comment on why it's important for employers like general mills to have inclusive workplace policies? is it good for business? >> it's critical that employees are able to bring their full self to work every day. it's been our experience that when employees can be their authent authent authentic selves, their productivity is increased. that allows our organization to grow and thrive. it's the bedrock of our success. talent is the key to everything that we do. we believe the potential of thousands and millions of employees will be able to be

their full selves. >> do you think general mills model could be replicated by other companies? >> absolutely. we live in place where 80% of the fortune 500 are providing appropriate protections. we believe they out perform those that don't. while we recognize we are lrj organizations, we believe it's a model that can be replicated throughout corporate america regardless of the size of the business. it's as simple as talking to employees and other companies that have gone down the road. >> very good. i've heard from many transgender constituents who have had similar experiences to yours. one constituent was fired from her job after 29 years for what she believed was largely due to her transition from a male to a

female. i wanted to ask what your experience has been. what your experience has had an you financially and emotionally? >> it's been extremely tolling. it is still emotional for me to talk about this issue in a personal way. i suffer post-traumatic stress. i lost a well, extremely well paying position and career and have never been able to recover financially. i mentioned my student loan debt as kwquadrupled. it's unbelievable. i would never phantomed in my whole life, where i grew up, you work hard, go to work every day and the rest will follow that my life would have ended up this way because i was a stellar employee.

i still have all my job reviews in my garage in a box because it was so demoralizing and dehumanizing to be let go. once i announced which was already visible to the rest of the world because just being me, it ended very rapidly and overnight i became lazy, shiftless. all these sorts of things. just literally overnight once announcing transition. it was a quick break till the end at that point. i know many others that suffer the same thing. it will go with me to my grave. >> thank you very much for your courage both in going through what you've gone through but in sharing with everybody else and giving us a face to identify what's an important issue in this country today. the importance of making sure that every person in this country has the potential and it's better