Based on numbers he's reviewed, Gov. Bob McDonnell says he's not sure the state needs to add a protection against sexual orientation discrimination in state law.
He was asked yesterday about the topic, which he's trying to put to rest, during a monthly radio appearance.
Asked if he would sign a bill to prohibit discrimination in the state work force based on sexual orientation, the governor said, "I don't know that we need it based on the numbers that I've seen. There really isn't any rampant discrimination on any basis in Virginia."
"If you're going to have a law, it needs to actually address a real problem," he said.
McDonnell, unlike his predecessor who signed an executive order extending sex-bias protections, has issued an executive directive saying workplace discrimination, including bias against gays, is prohibited in Virginia.
The Virginia Department of Human Resource Management, which tracks allegations of discrimination, provided numbers of complaints to the administration. McDonnell's office, when asked to share what the governor reviewed, released numbers dating back to 1992.
For this fiscal year, starting July 1, 2009, the department registered 78 complainants with 136 allegations. Those allegations can come from the state's 100,000-plus employees as well as job applicants, according to the department's director, Sara Wilson.
Between July 2009 and March 9 the allegations broke down this way: 34 based on retaliation, 32 on race, 20 on gender, 17 on disability, 10 on age, six on sexual harassment, five on national origin, four on religion, four on sexual orientation, three on veteran status and one on workplace violence.
So far this fiscal year, none of the sexual orientation allegations have deemed to be founded, according to Wilson.
Between 1992 and now, the department has registered 24 complaints based on sexual orientation.
J. Tucker Martin, a spokesman for McDonnell, said in 2008-09, the last full fiscal year for which the state has data on allegations, 67 people filed complaints. He said using the current size of the state work force of about 102,000, the number of complainants as a percentage of the overall state work force is 0.00065 percent.
"That is an infinitesimal percentage," he said.
Sen. A. Donald McEachin, D-Henrico, who sought during the most recent legislative session to add sexual orientation to the anti-discrimination policy in public employment said "any discrimination is unacceptable, so the optimal number ought to be zero."
In addition, he said, when people don't have a cause of action for a complaint, they could be less likely to make them.
"If we don't have a law that will protect people, I would not expect we would see a whole lot of complaints when they don't have a lot of recourse," he said.
Del. David L. Englin, D-Alexandria, who also fought to add the protection this year, said the state numbers are "meaningless because state employees aren't stupid and if discrimination based on sexual orientation is not illegal, then they're not going to report it."
McDonnell's executive directive came after an outcry over Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's opinion delivered to state college and university leaders saying that it was illegal for them to have policies that ban discrimination against gays without a mandate from the legislature.
McDonnell issued an opinion in 2006 when serving as attorney general that it's up to the legislature to add the sexual orientation protection to state law. The General Assembly rejected a proposal to do so again this year.
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