Local
D.C. gay bars launch campaign against ‘tipped wage’ measure
Workers fear wage losses, staff cutbacks
Town Danceboutique (Washington Blade photo by Wyatt Westlund)
Employees, managers, and owners of the D.C. gay bars Town Danceboutique, Trade, and Number Nine organized an election committee earlier this month to oppose a June 19 ballot measure asking voters to decide whether the so-called “tipped wage” exemption should be eliminated.
Other D.C. bars, restaurants, and nightclubs across the city quickly joined the committee, called NO2DC77, according to gay D.C. nightlife advocate Mark Lee, who is serving as a consultant to the committee.
The ballot measure, called Initiative 77, calls for ending an exemption to the city’s minimum wage law that allows employers of tipped workers to pay them less than the prevailing minimum wage. If approved by voters, it would require all tipped workers to be paid the full city minimum wage as part of their base pay.
NO2DC77 points out on its website NO2DC77.com that existing D.C. law requires restaurants, bars and other employers of tipped workers to pay tipped workers the difference if their tips fall short of the full minimum wage, which is currently $12.50 per hour. Under the existing tipped wage exemption, employers also pay tipped workers a lower minimum wage of $3.33 per hour.
“It is extremely rare for tipped workers to not earn incomes that are significantly higher than minimum wage, and the tip-wage system allows them to retain great earning potential,” NO2DC77 says in a May 4 statement.
“Tipped employees at the city’s nightlife establishments know that outlawing the tip-wage system will reduce their incomes, as well as result in staffing cutbacks and reductions in shifts and hours,” the statement says. “Jobs will be lost, consumer prices will skyrocket, venues won’t survive, and the economic foundation of D.C.’s vibrant and dynamic nighttime economy will be shattered,” the statement concludes.
Lee said that because LGBT people make up a disproportionately high percentage of tipped workers in nightlife establishments, they could be among the most to be adversely impacted if the initiative passes on June 19 in the city’s primary election.
Supporters of the initiative, led by the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, or ROC United, dispute restaurant industry leaders’ claim that forcing them to pay tipped workers the full minimum wage over and above their tips would create a severe economic hardship in D.C.’s highly competitive hospitality industry.
ROC United officials also dispute claims that the large majority of tipped workers earn more than the minimum wage, saying servers in smaller venues that are not high end “white tablecloth” restaurants often make less than the minimum wage. The group has also launched a campaign highlighting what it says are studies showing that female tipped workers are subjected to sexual harassment to a far greater degree than females who work in other professions.
District of Columbia
Mayor Bowser signs bill requiring insurers to cover PrEP
‘This is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS’
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on March 20 signed a bill approved by the D.C. Council that requires health insurance companies to cover the costs of HIV prevention or PrEP drugs for D.C. residents at risk for HIV infection.
Like all legislation approved by the Council and signed by the mayor, the bill, called the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act, was sent to Capitol Hill for a required 30-day congressional review period before it takes effect as D.C. law.
Gay D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) last year introduced the bill.
Insurance coverage for PrEP drugs has been provided through coverage standards included in the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But AIDS advocacy organizations have called on states and D.C. to pass their own legislation requiring insurance coverage of PrEP as a safeguard in case federal policies are weakened or removed by the Trump administration, which has already reduced federal funding for HIV/AIDS-related programs.
Like legislation passed by other states, the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act requires insurers to cover all PrEP drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Studies have shown that PrEP drugs, which can be taken as pills or by injection just twice a year, are highly effective in preventing HIV infection.
“I think this is a win for our community,” Parker said after the D.C. Council voted unanimously to approve the bill on its first vote on the measure in February. “And this is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
District of Columbia
Blade editor to be inducted into D.C. Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame
Kevin Naff marks 24 years with publication this year
Longtime Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff will be inducted into D.C.’s Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame in June, the group announced this week.
Hall of Fame honorees are chosen by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter. Naff and two other inductees — Seth Borenstein, a Washington-based national science writer for the AP and Cheryl W. Thompson, an award-winning correspondent for National Public Radio — will be celebrated at the chapter’s Dateline Awards dinner on Tuesday, June 9, at the National Press Club. The dinner’s emcee will be Kojo Nnamdi, host of WAMU radio’s weekly “Politics Hour.”
“I am tremendously honored by this recognition,” Naff said. “I have spent a lifetime in the D.C. area learning from so many talented journalists and am humbled to be considered in their company. Thank you to SPJ and to all the LGBTQ pioneers who came before me who made this possible.”
Naff joined the Blade in 2002 after years in print and digital journalism. He worked as a financial reporter for Reuters in New York before moving to Baltimore in 1996 to launch the Baltimore Sun’s website. He spent four years at the Sun before leaving for an internet startup and later joining the mobile data group at Verizon Wireless working on the first generation of mobile apps.
He then moved to the Blade and has served as the publication’s longest-tenured editor. In 2023, Naff published his first book, “How We Won the War for LGBTQ Equality — And How Our Enemies Could Take It All Away.”
Previous Hall of Fame inductees include luminaries in journalism like Wolf Blitzer, Benjamin Bradlee, Bob Woodward, Andrea Mitchell, and Edgar Allen Poe. The Blade’s senior news reporter Lou Chibbaro Jr. was inducted in 2015.
Maryland
Supreme Court ruling against conversion therapy bans could affect Md. law
Then-Gov. Larry Hogan signed statute in 2018
By PAMELA WOOD, JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV, and MADELEINE O’NEILL | The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ kids in Colorado, a ruling that also could apply to Maryland’s ban on the discredited practice.
An 8-1 high court majority sided with a Christian counselor who argues the law banning talk therapy violates the First Amendment. The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide whether it meets a legal standard that few laws pass.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court’s majority, said the law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The First Amendment, he wrote, “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
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