As Daily Kos has covered recently, many openly LGBTQ+ teachers have been fired or forced to resign from their jobs because of being open about their sexuality or gender identity. However, teaching is far from the only profession where folks report facing discrimination or harassment in the workplace. According to a recent report by the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, almost one in ten LGBTQ+ people in the United States have experienced workplace discrimination within the last year alone, as covered by LGBTQ+ outlet them. When looking at their careers as a whole, 46% of respondents said they experienced bias in the workplace at some point, including either being passed over for a promotion, harassed, denied additional hours or shifts, or even fired.

Researchers surveyed more than 900 LGBTQ+ adults in May 2021. Respondents were asked about their experiences with discrimination in the previous year, the previous five years, and then throughout their entire lives. Unsurprisingly, trans workers and queer workers of color reported particularly disturbing treatment. 

Just under 50% of trans workers said they had been passed over for a job or fired because of their gender identity. To keep their jobs and protect themselves, about half of trans workers said they were not out to their supervisors at work. About one-quarter of trans respondents said they were not out to their coworkers. More than 40% of trans respondents said they changed their presentation, like clothing or bathroom use, in order to conceal their identity while at work. Probably unsurprisingly, many respondents said they strategically avoided talking about their personal lives while at work. 

LGBTQ+ people of color reported higher rates of discrimination than their white peers. Nearly 30% said they had been denied a job at some point because of their identity. 36% of LGBTQ+ people of color said they’d experienced verbal harassment while at work. In comparison, just over one-quarter of white LGBTQ+ said they’d been verbally harassed at work. 18% said they’d been denied a job because of their identity.

One in four LGBTQ+ workers said they’d experienced sexual harassment at work. Just over 20% said they’d been physically harassed as well. 

Given that the survey included a year of the pandemic, questions about the most recent year focused on whether respondents had been denied or fired from a job due to their sexual orientation or gender identity. About nine percent of respondents said they had been let go or denied a job for those reasons.  An estimated 9 percent reported being denied a job or laid off in the past 12 months because of their orientation or identity.

Nearly 60% of respondents who said they experienced discrimination or harassment said the person who abused them referenced religious beliefs as justification for doing so. According to the study, respondents told researchers, for example, they were told to pray that they were not LGBTQ+, told they were going to Hell or that they were an abomination, or being told quotes from the Bible. 

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