I think that so many immigration opponents, especially just as we're having these conversations in our everyday lives,

here, well, we just need to be good. We just need to be like a shining light in the world, and we need to do this because it's the right thing to do.

That's true. That's all true. And also, that doesn't persuade people.

We should do it for reasons that help our country.

Immigrants help our economy. They use less social resources, in particular,

when we are talking about the aging of our population and our social safety net, immigration can be a part of the solution we're not harnessing.

This is Sarah, and Beth, your name is a Pant suit politics, the home of grace filled political conversations.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Pantsuit Politics, and welcome to all our new listeners who are discovering us through the Apple Spotlight program. We are still so thrilled to be the second creative team chosen by the editor.

Team at Apple Podcasts. If you're new and you've noticed that we talk about our lives outside of politics at the end of the show, but you'd like a little bit more of that content, you can check out our Ask Us Anything episode from the end of 2020.

It was really fun. We talked about the origin of the show. We talked about other parts of our lives. We just we answered the questions, and it was a lot of fun.

So if you want to check that episode out, it'll be linked in the show notes. And also, if you're interested in Pantsuit politics, merch, we have so many fun options.

Especially if you enjoy the phrase, have the best day available to you. You can find it on t-shirts or notebooks or masks, whatever you would like. We have new designs going up all the time.

We partner with T public on our merchandise, and it is our favorite thing in the whole universe when people tag us on Instagram showing their Pantsuit politics pride.

It's so true. And fun fact, we're going to have the most beautiful best day available to you story as our moment of hope today. But before we get to that moment of hope, we're going to talk about the Equality Act.

We've been getting lots and lots of questions about the Equality Act. And then after the break, we're going to talk about Joe Biden's immigration plan and immigration generally.

Lots of questions about that as well. And then we will in the show with what's on our mind outside of politics. And it's going to be a good win. So stay tuned.

The Equality Act passed in the last House of Representatives, and it has just passed again on February 24th in between something important happened. The Supreme Court decided the Bostock versus Clayton case.

We've talked about this a lot here on the podcast and also in detail on the nightly nuance on Patreon. But in that case, the Supreme Court with Justice Gorsuch writing for the majority held that sex based discrimination under the Civil Rights Act encompasses gender identity and sexual orientation.

So HR 5, the Equality Act, has Congress putting its stamp of approval on the Supreme Court's interpretation of this legislation and explicitly amends the Civil Rights Act to include gender identity and sexual orientation in the sex based discrimination that's prohibited under federal law.

And this is important for lots of reasons. You know, I have a personal stake in the Supreme Court decision in this discussion generally when I was a city commissioner, we passed the Fairness Act, which made this explicit for our particular area and our city you could not discriminate based on sex or gender identity or sexual orientation. We expanded it through the Fairness Act.

And what I learned so much during that time is that people thought this was already the case. People thought it was already the case across the United States that it was illegal to fire someone because they were gay to discriminate against somebody because they were transgender like people just assumed that was the state of affairs.

Lots of people, not everyone, but that's something I heard over and over again when I was out in my community talking about the Fairness ordinance. And so this Supreme Court decision was huge because what happened is cities like mine passed Fairness ordinances and Bethes talked about this. I know you even spoke before they'll hire legislator, right?

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