Houston Mayor Introduces Equal Rights Ordinance

Stephen Roppolo offered insight to the Houston Business Journal after Mayor Annise Parker proposed a new equal rights ordinance.

Under terms of the ordinance, state and federal protections against discrimination based on sex, religion and gender would be extended to sexual orientation and gender identity.

With every new ordinance comes new interpretations.

Stephen noted that Mayor Parker's ordinance applies to employers with 50 employees or more.

"The ordinance and its new requirements won’t apply to really small employers, which should help keep some of the smaller mom-and-pops from being impacted," he said.

Stephen thinks the real unknown in the ordinance relates to familial status, which basically says employers can't discriminate against employees because they are raising children.

"The anticipation is that we don't want to allow employers to make decisions about advancement, promotion, hiring because you have kids at home," he said. "That's really what I think it's designed to do."

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