Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Legislature Casada and Gotto: Keep Nashville Safe from Nondiscrimination
Posted by Jim Ridley on Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 3:50 PM
Who needs those pesky nondiscrimination statutes? Certainly not Rep. Glen Casada. Hours after a meeting where some 40 Nashville business leaders and Christian conservatives met with Casada and fellow Rep. Jim Gotto to plot how to thwart the "homosexual agenda," Casada told the City Paper's Joey Garrison (who was shut out of the meeting) he's working on a way around those civil-rights nuisances:
State Rep. Glen Casada, a Republican from Franklin, told The City Paper he’s in the process of drafting legislation that would prevent local municipalities from creating laws that force businesses to adhere to certain policies, including nondiscrimination measures. He said he hopes the legislation is drafted by next week.“It’s up to the local business to decide what they will and will not do,” Casada said of his soon-to-be-filed bill. “The local government won’t be able to implement their morality on our local businesses.”
It's a move designed to undermine bills such as the one filed by Councilmen Mike Jameson and Jamie Hollin, which would require companies that do business with Nashville city government to comply with Metro’s nondiscrimination policy. Gotto, who is also a Metro councilman, told Garrison he'll have his own counterattack ready at the city level: Either he or a fellow councilman will force an unusual vote on first reading when the council convenes Jan. 18 — a tactic evidently meant to fluster colleagues into voting it down. (That's shaping up as quite a meeting.)
