Corporate America and the Complicated Battle for LGBTQ Justice

This summer, a large group of more than 200 businesses weighed in on the LGBTQ discrimination cases currently before the Supreme Court with a pointed argument: workplace equality is good for business.  For the Human Rights Campaign, one of the LGBTQ civil rights groups that helped coordinate the companies’ amicus brief to the high court, that argument has been central to its efforts for nearly two decades. It’s part of the thinking behind the group’s Corporate Equality Index, a de facto industry barometer for how companies treat LGBTQ employees, according to Beck Bailey, who directs the group’s workplace equality program. “We said, ‘We want you to do these things, because, not only is there a right and moral reason for you to be inclusive of LGBTQ people, but there’s a very strong business case,’” Bailey said. “That business case centers largely around your talent, your workforce, that if you want to have the best, you have to have those people fully engaged, you want them fully productive, you’re going to have to cast the widest net and when you cast that net you’re gonna have to welcome everyone into it.”  Since 2002, the group has issued reports on its corporate equality index, or CEI,

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