After a Democratic congressman offered an LGBT measure as an amendment to the Defense Department spending bill, the House Rules Committee would not let the measure come up for a vote on Tuesday night, The Hill reported.
This is the third time that Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY) has introduced the measure that would affirm anti-discrimination protections for LGBT employees of federal contractors as an amendment to a spending bill. On Tuesday, he said he hoped a vote on the amendment would send a positive message to the LGBT community in the wake of the deadly shooting in Orlando, Florida.
“It’s hard to imagine that any act that is so horrific could lead to anything positive. But if we were going to do anything, it would be a very positive step to say that discrimination has no place in our law and to reaffirm the president’s actions in this area,” he told The Hill. “Seems to me a pretty basic thing to do.”
Maloney (pictured above) first introduced the measure as an amendment to a Veterans Affairs spending bill in May. The amendment at first looked like it would pass until a handful of Republicans switched their votes from “yes” to “no” in order to defeat the measure.
The Democratic congressman then introduced the measure as an amendment to an energy and water spending bill, which passed. But the pro-LGBT amendment caused the entire spending bill to fail in the House.
Following those votes, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) sought to limit the amendments to spending bills in order to keep the appropriations process from being derailed, according to The Hill.
