Pelosi Still Backs ENDA Despite Concerns After Hobby Lobby Ruling

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., speaks at her weekly news briefing Friday, May 9, 2014, on Capitol Hill in Washington. House Democrats stand deeply divided over whether to participate in a Republican-le... House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., speaks at her weekly news briefing Friday, May 9, 2014, on Capitol Hill in Washington. House Democrats stand deeply divided over whether to participate in a Republican-led investigation of the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, with party leader Nancy Pelosi calling the newest probe a "political stunt." (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) MORE LESS

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Thursday said that she still backs the current version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act despite multiple equality groups’ decision to pull support for the bill over its religious exemption.

“It’s all about choices,” she said during a press briefing. “When you’re an advocate, 100 percent is your goal. When you have to make a vote — the bill that we have is the one that passed the Senate in a bipartisan way. I think that has a big value.”

The groups that withdrew support for the bill cited concerns that companies would be able to use the exemption to discriminate against LGBT individuals due to religious beliefs, especially given the exemption granted by the Supreme Court in the Hobby Lobby case.

Pelosi said she has concerns about the current version of ENDA, and that she prefers the version passed by the House in 2007 with a narrower religious exemption. But she said it’s a “question of timing.”

She said that she hoped the House could pass the bill and then later “deal with some of the concerns that are in it, which have been enflamed by the Supreme Court decision.”

She also said that she had a plan to address the bill’s religious exemption, but would not reveal any details, according to the Huffington Post.

“I’m not going to tell you my plan,” she said. “We’re going to carefully review what the options are.”

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  1. Time to give Speaker Pelosi her gavel back!

  2. Avatar for Libs Libs says:

    Please someone tell her what she needs to do/say, she is obviously lost as usual.

  3. Boehner, bring this bill to a vote!

    Then

    Let some for-profit-sincerely-religious-corporation sue the government over bogus claims of suppressing their godly practices. and

    Let The SCOTUS Five further travestize Constitutional jurisprudence in their narrowly affirming, written majority opinion, that will be immediately orally clarified to have broad application.

    Then

    Let Democratic agents-for-change use the ensuing, intense, widespread, justifiable outrage of the American people for the enforced prostitution of our Constitution and blind-justice ideal against the high-rolling corporate johns who paid for “the dirty” and the five black-robed pimps who made it happen. and

    Let Americans elect Democratic Presidents until every member of this Supreme Court cabal is replaced, even if it takes twenty more years!

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