Political Quotes

“Thank you very much for the recognition, Mr. President-- the Presiding Officer. I really heard the point about workplace safety. This bill does not prohibit employers from addressing safety concerns. Instead, it accounts for employers' legal obligations to ensure workplace safety. Written in the bill, section 6(b) of the bill expressly prohibits that the employment nondiscrimination provision ``shall be enforced in the same manner and by the same means, including with the same jurisdiction, as if such subsection was incorporated into Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.'' In other words, employers will be no more burdened by this bill than they are under the current employment discrimination law. Under the longstanding, burden-shifting scheme applied by the courts in title VII cases, the employer may defeat a discrimination claim by asserting the workplace safety as a legitimate nondiscriminatory reason for taking adverse employment action against an employee, with the burden then shifting to the employee to prove that the asserted reason was a pretext for discrimination. So this is addressed, and I appreciate that. But as it was passed in a boldly bipartisan way, it was shown to have incorporated that concern in the bill itself. Again, this is something that has been passed in States like Tennessee and Louisiana. This has been shown to have wide bipartisan support. It is shown to be needed in the Federal context.…”