Local
LGBT tipped workers hail D.C. Council repeal of Initiative 77
Bowser has promised to sign measure
Mayor Muriel Bowser has vowed to sign a repeal of Initiative 77 passed this week. (Washington Blade photo by Lou Chibbaro, Jr.)
LGBT tipped workers at the city’s restaurants, bars, and nightclubs joined their straight colleagues on Tuesday in celebrating a vote by the D.C. City Council to repeal an initiative passed by voters in June to end the so-called tipped wage system.
In its first of two required readings, the Council voted 8 to 5 to approve a bill calling for repealing Initiative 77, which voters passed by a margin of 56 percent to 44 percent despite vocal opposition by what appeared to be a large majority of tipped workers.
Council observers expect the Council to give final approval to the repeal bill later this month. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has said she would sign a repeal bill.
Had it become law, Initiative 77 would require restaurants, bars and other employers of tipped workers to pay those workers the city’s full minimum wage, which is currently $13.25 per hour and which will increase to $15 per hour in 2020. The minimum wage for tipped workers is currently $3.89 per hour.
Under the city’s tipped wage law, employers in the city’s highly competitive hospitality industry are allowed to pay tipped workers a lower minimum wage on grounds that the workers make more than the city’s full minimum wage in tips. The law requires employers to pay the difference if workers’ tips fall short of the full minimum wage.
Bar and restaurant owners said ending the tipped wage system would increase their labor costs to a degree that could force them out of business or force them to raise food and beverage prices, which they said would result in lower overall income for tipped workers.
Supporters of the initiative disputed those claims, saying ending the tipped wage system in several other states has not brought about significant problems for restaurants and bars. But opponents of the initiative, including large numbers of tipped workers, told Council members D.C.’s unique and thriving restaurant, bar and nightclub venues would be especially susceptible to serious and harmful repercussions if Initiative 77 were to become law.
Employees and owners of several of the city’s gay bars were part of a coalition of hospitality industry businesses and employees that urged the Council to repeal Initiative 77.
In a development that surprised some observers, once the Council voted 8 to 5 on Tuesday both in the Council’s Committee of the Whole and in the full Council to approve the repeal bill it voted unanimously in a third vote for an emergency version of the bill. The emergency measure takes effect immediately, which prevents Initiative 77 from taking effect this month while the Council moves ahead with its normal legislative process that takes about two months for passing the regular repeal bill. The process involves sending it to the mayor for her signature and completing a required 30 legislative day review by Congress.
“LGBT tipped employees along with tipped employees across the city are celebrating tonight that Initiative 77 has been repealed by the City Council, which will protect their jobs and their livelihoods and their income,” said gay nightlife advocate Mark Lee, who served as managing consultant for NO2DC77, one of the leading groups opposing the initiative.
“This sets a national standard of pushback against the outside organizations that came into Washington to try to impose this upon the workers,” Lee said.
Many supporters of Initiative 77, led by the New York-based group Restaurant Opportunities Center United, denounced the Council for what they called a blatant move to overturn the will of voters who approved the initiative in the city’s June 19 primary election. Some said they would consider pushing for yet another voter initiative to bring the measure back for another vote at the polls.
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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