Most Fortune 500 Companies Protect Gays, Study Finds
The vast majority of Fortune 500 companies – 94.2 percent -- voluntarily include sexual orientation in their employment nondiscrimination policies, according to a study by the Equality Forum, a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization.
According to the study – which was conducted in collaboration with Louis Thomas, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and Ian Ayres, a professor at Yale Law School – 471 Fortune 500 companies offer such protections, even though there currently is no federal workplace protection based on sexual orientation. Twenty states include sexual orientation nondiscrimination in their workplace statutes.
The study also found that the number of companies offering such protections is growing.
In fall 2003, when Equality Forum began contacting the FORTUNE 500 companies, 323 (64.6 percent) companies explicitly provided sexual orientation protection in their workplace policies. By fall 2004, 405 (81 percent) FORTUNE 500 companies included sexual orientation in workplace nondiscrimination policies.
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