Not All Laws are Created Equal: Legal Differences in State Non-Discrimination Laws and the Impact of LGBT Employment Protections

Abstract

In this paper, I study the impact of legal differences in state employment nondiscrimination acts (ENDAs) for gay men and lesbian women on labor market outcomes. Employing a DDD approach, I show that enacting an employment non-discrimination act is associated with increased wages of gay men and decreased employment of lesbian women. If all employment non-discrimination acts are treated as identical, these laws increased the hourly wages of gay men by 2.7% and decreased the employment of lesbian women by 1.7% and their hours worked by 0.7 hours. The results show that the strength of the law can result in heteroge-neous effects of the laws for gay men, but not for lesbian women. ENDAs with both punitive and compensatory damage provisions resulted in smaller wage increases for gay men than ENDAs with only compensatory damage provisions. ENDAs with longer statutes of limitations for complaints increased the employment of gay men, whereas laws with shorter statutes of limitations decreased employment. Based on the estimates from the state-level employment non-discrimination acts, I argue that extending federal protections under Title VII would lead to a small increase in the wages of gay men, but would significantly reduce the employment of lesbian women.