Maine’s Antidiscrimination Law

Anthony C. Infanti has a post on Feminist Law Professors about a Portland Press Herald article on Maine’s law prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. Press Herald reporter Gregory D. Kesich notes that since the statute went into effect 18 months ago, it “has produced little extra work for the agency that investigates all human-rights complaints”:

Since Dec. 28, 2005, the Maine Human Rights Commission has received 34 claims of discrimination against gays and lesbians, with only one claim proceeding to a lawsuit now pending in Penobscot County Superior Court.

That makes up about 2.5 percent of discrimination claims filed in Maine … .

Opponents are already citing that as evidence that such protections are “unnecessary,” Kesich writes. He quotes the executive director of the Christian Civic League of Maine, a leading opponent of the current law, as saying:

“It doesn’t surprise me at all. We knew there was no need for this law,” Heath said. “The low number of incidents indicates that Maine people are indeed tolerant and this issue is not a big deal.”

Infanti, however, points out that there are other more-plausible explanations for the low number of complaints — e.g., that the statute is an effective deterrent, that cases may be settled out of court, or that discrimination may go unreported because victims fear being outed. In addition, he notes that it’s meaningless to look at the raw number of sexual-orientation-discrimination claims without placing that in the context of the total number of gay employees in the work force. There’s a pretty big difference between 34 out of 100 and 34 out of 100,000.