MBNBC's José Díaz Balart Reports on Arkansas' anti-gay bill SB 202

• published: 19 Feb 2015
• views: 21

Video courtesy Carlos Maza/Equality Matters. JDB: We're going to take you to Arkansas. A story there has gotten little national attention, but some are calling a big setback for civil rights. In Arkansas it will soon be illegal for cities to enact discrimination protections for the LGBT community. The bill is called the Intrastate Commerce Improvement act. Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson says he's not going to sign it, he's not going to veto it. And without doing anything, the bill will become law on it's own. We called Hutchinson and received a statement that says in part, the Governor wants to prevent quote "burdensome regulations" while remaining "concerned about the loss of local control." Joining me now now from Little Rock is Andrew DeMillo, the Arkansas capitol correspondent for the Associated Press. Thanks for being with me this morning. Andrew DeMillo; Thanks for having me. One things this bill reminded me of is kinda [SB 1062] where we saw businesses you know, Apple, Chase, airlines say they're not going to go do business there if your state makes these kinds of laws. Is there any similarity here? AD: We haven't seen business groups saying that yet. You know part of the argument that sponsors had made for SB 202 in Arkansas is they had argued that not having a uniforming of discrimination ordinances across the state would be a deterrent to businesses moving here. One of the problems with that is the sponsor of that hasn't really named any specific business that have not moved to Arkansas because of the lack of uniformity in these ordinances. JDB: So what's it intended to do? AD: What it will effectively do is bar any cities from adding any protections for the lesbian, gay or bisexual community because it bans them from going beyond what's spelled out in state law. State law does not offer protections based on sexual orientation or gender identity. This is really in response to, there was a city last year, Fayetteville in northwest Arkansas had passed an ordinance that extended those protections to sexual orientation, gender identity. That measure ultimately was repealed by voters. But this is an effort to try and prevent other cities from following Fayetteville's path. JDB: Andrew Dimillo, Associated Press, thank you for being with me. We're going to be keeping a close watch on this story. *Correction by transcriber. Diaz-Balert appears to say SB 1060, but the bill is is referring to is SB 1062,