The election of Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate has only diminished the already small hope of passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in the coming year, reports the DC Agenda.

Even before Brown took over Ted Kennedy's Senate seat and ended the Democrats filibuster-proof majority, things didn't look good for passing ENDA in 2010. While sufficient votes could possibly be found in the House, there doesn't seem to be enough support yet in the Senate. 

That's not stopping groups like the Human Rights Campaign and the National Center for Transgender Equality from lobbying Congress members.

“I’m still optimistic,” Mara
Keisling, executive director of NCTE, told the DC Agenda. “The Senate’s always been the
harder challenge on every piece of legislation, not just on LGBT
legislation. So the Senate’s a challenge; we’ll get there.”

Read the full story here.