First published February 27, 2021.
On 25 February 2021, the US House of Representatives voted 224 to 206 to pass the Equality Act (H.R. 5), a bill that would write explicit protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity into federal civil-rights law. Every Democrat present voted yes, joined by three Republicans. The bill then went to the Senate, where it stalled the following month and has not become law. Here is what it would do, why it divided Congress, and where things stand now.
What the Equality Act would change
The bill would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the landmark law passed during the civil rights movement that bans discrimination based on race, colour, religion, sex and national origin. The Equality Act would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the protected categories and apply them across many areas of life:
- employment and housing;
- public accommodations, expanded to include retail, entertainment, many services and transport;
- education and programmes that receive federal money;
- credit and jury service.
It would also spell out that sex discrimination includes discrimination based on pregnancy, childbirth and sex stereotypes. A key and contested section says the Religious Freedom Restoration Act could not be used as a defence against claims under the new law.
How the February 2021 vote unfolded
The 2021 vote was the second time the House had passed the bill. It first cleared the chamber in May 2019 by 236 to 173, but the Republican-led Senate never took it up. With Democrats holding the House, a 50-50 Senate and the White House after the 2020 elections, supporters hoped the timing was finally right.
The three Republicans who crossed party lines in 2021 were Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and John Katko and Tom Reed of New York. The rest of their party opposed it.
President Joe Biden had promised during his 2020 campaign to make the Equality Act a priority. Before the vote he urged Congress to act, saying, "Every person should be treated with dignity and respect." Illinois Democrat Marie Newman, whose daughter Evie is transgender, told colleagues she was voting yes for her daughter, whom she called "the strongest, bravest person I know."
Why supporters said the law was needed
In June 2020 the Supreme Court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County that firing someone for being gay or transgender is sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. That was a major win for LGBTQ workers, but it applied to employment only. Supporters of the Equality Act argued that without new legislation, protections in housing, shops, restaurants, lending and other areas would still depend on where a person lives, since state laws vary widely.
Public opinion was on their side, at least in broad terms. A 2020 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found that 83% of Americans favoured laws protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people from discrimination, including 68% of Republicans.
Why opponents objected
Most Republicans and a range of religious and advocacy groups opposed the bill as written. Their main arguments were:
- Religious liberty. Groups including the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints warned that faith-based schools, charities and businesses could be forced to act against their beliefs, especially because the bill limits use of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Some backed an alternative, the Fairness for All Act, which pairs LGBTQ protections with religious exemptions.
- Single-sex spaces and sports. Some women's groups argued that defining sex discrimination to include gender identity could affect women's sports, changing rooms, shelters and prisons. Supporters, including domestic-violence organisations, rejected the claim that non-discrimination rules endanger women.
- Scope after Bostock. Some legal scholars said the Supreme Court ruling made parts of the bill less necessary, though not all of it.
Polling on these narrower questions is more divided than the headline figure. PRRI found in 2021 that about three in four Americans opposed letting businesses refuse service to LGBTQ people on religious grounds, but debates about sports and other specific policies have proven far more contested.
What happened in the Senate
The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the bill on 17 March 2021. Passing it would have required 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, which meant at least ten Republican senators, and that support never materialised. The bill did not reach a floor vote. In November 2024, the fact-checking site PolitiFact rated Biden's promise to enact the Equality Act as broken.
Congress did pass a narrower measure in 2022, the Respect for Marriage Act, which requires states to recognise same-sex marriages performed in other states while including religious-liberty provisions. The Equality Act itself was reintroduced in 2023 and again in April 2025, but in both cases it remained in committee.
The long road behind the bill
The idea is older than many people realise. In 1974, Representatives Bella Abzug and Ed Koch of New York introduced an earlier bill, also called the Equality Act, to add sexual orientation to civil-rights law. It never received a vote. The modern version was introduced in 2015 by Representative David Cicilline and Senator Jeff Merkley, and it has been reintroduced in almost every Congress since.
That history explains why the 2021 House vote was celebrated as historic even though it did not change the law: it showed that a majority of one chamber was ready to extend the 1964 framework, while also showing how far the Senate remained from agreement.
Key facts at a glance
- House votes: passed 236–173 in May 2019 and 224–206 on 25 February 2021.
- Senate: hearing in March 2021, no floor vote; the bill has not become law.
- Existing protection: since Bostock (2020), federal law bars workplace discrimination against gay and transgender employees.
- Related law: the Respect for Marriage Act of 2022 protects recognition of same-sex marriages.
Sources: Wikipedia: Equality Act (United States); PolitiFact, 27 November 2024: Enact the Equality Act; quotes as reported by The Guardian, 25 February 2021; original report via UNILAD.
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