PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A lawsuit filed in Allentown, Pennsylvania, seeks to overturn a city ordinance that makes employment or housing discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation illegal, an ordinance that mirrors dozens across the country, including those in at least seven other Pennsylvania communities.

The four Allentown landlords who filed the suit don’t believe it’s appropriate to give special protection to people based on sexual orientation, said the group’s lawyer, Randall Wenger of Lancaster.

Allentown last year amended its Human Relations Commission act — a law that prohibited employment and housing discrimination based on such things as race, religion or country of origin — to include sexual orientation and gender identity.

Similar laws exist in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Erie, New Hope, Lancaster, York and Harrisburg, according to Stacey Sobel, executive director of the Philadelphia-based Center for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights.

Liz Bradbury, co-chair of the Pennsylvania Gay and Lesbian Alliance, said she thinks the Allentown lawsuit shows that the landlords want to be able to “discriminate against this minority group.”

“The fact that these people are trying to repeal the law ... is a demonstration of the necessity of the law,” Bradbury said.

Wenger said his clients did not want to comment, but they don’t believe the government should endorse a lifestyle that “they believe is morally harmful.”

“They don’t have the kind of personal animosity that the word ‘discrimination’ entails,” he said. “I think what they want to be able to do is to preserve the right for the people of Allentown to protect their freedom of conscience.”

Wenger is associated with the Alliance Defense Fund, a national group based in Phoenix that promotes religious liberty and traditional values, but he said it wasn’t clear if the group would pay for his legal costs.

The Alliance Defense Fund has been involved in other similar legal challenges around the country, including a suit filed in the past month challenging a New Orleans law that gives health care benefits to city workers’ domestic partners.

Homer Floyd, the executive director of the state Human Relations Commission, said the Allentown case could come down to the interpretation of the state Human Relations Act, which does not provide protection for sexual orientation but authorizes governing bodies to adopt similar ordinances.

“What is ‘similar?’ That is subject to court interpretation,” he said.

Wenger said he will argue in court that local governing bodies can’t enact laws that exceed those in place by state statute.

Gail Hoover, the Allentown city councilmember who introduced the GLBT rights legislation, said the city would defend the suit “to the hilt.”

“I think ‘similar’ is that you’re offering protection in the spirit of that act. To add another class, I don’t think there’s anything illegal about that,” Hoover said.

Floyd said the state commission has tried and continues to try to get gender identity and sexual orientation discrimination protection added to the state act.

Lawyers on both sides said that if the Allentown case is appealed to and ruled upon by the state Supreme Court, the ruling would become binding for other Pennsylvania communities.