This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, November 5th, 2013.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act, now being debated in Congress, would add new groups to the so-called

protected classes in employment law.

Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, argues that the Act would further turn

the workplace into a legalistic environment, and it's not clear the Act would in the end help the groups

it's supposed to protect.

Enda is the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

It has been around in one form or another for 30 years or so, and in a nutshell it would add sexual orientation, gender expression, and a few similar categories to the list of protected groups that

under federal law employers are not supposed to take into account in hiring, firing,

and everything that comes in between.

Now, the bill has come close to passing once or twice before, but this is its most serious chance to pass the US Senate last night, passed it by quite a wide

margin with, I believe, seven or so Republicans supporting it along with all or more or less all the Democrats.

It now goes to the House where it is not considered to have very good chances of passing right

away. Speaker Bonner does not want to bring it up to the floor or and I don't believe

He will have to and yet the politics of the issue and you really need to separate

the politics from the policy or from the philosophy on this. The politics of the

issue are at a point where the Republican Party feels beaten up and perhaps with good reason for being perceived as always against gay people,

always against marriage, always against letting gay people serve in the military, you name it, they're against it.

And politically, a lot of Republicans

have real laws this is not a place they want to be in, especially with opinion

differing quite sharply between the older Republican base and most people under 40

...