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Norton Says Obama’s Executive Order Barring Discrimination Against LGBT Federal Contract Workers Follows Executive Precedents

July 21, 2014

WASHINGTON, DC – Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), a former chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), praised the President for issuing an Executive Order today prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating against employees based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Currently, there is no federal law that prohibits companies from discriminating against their employees based on sexual orientation or gender identity. However, 18 states and the District of Columbia have laws that ban this form of discrimination.

"I applaud the President's initiative to do what is clearly within his authority to help eliminate discrimination against the employees of federal contractors," Norton said. "The President is doing what President Franklin Delano Roosevelt did in 1941 with Executive Order 8802, which barred discrimination in the federal government and defense industries based on race, color, creed and national origin, well before Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act barred discrimination in the entire country. The President's action reminds Congress of its obligation to take the necessary legal action to protect all lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans from workplace discrimination, as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) would do. ENDA has the overwhelming support of the American people. We should pass the bill before the 113th Congress is finished."

ENDA would ban workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Norton has been pressing for House passage of ENDA since she was first elected to Congress. The bill has special meaning for Norton because it amends Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, barring job discrimination, which she enforced as chair of the EEOC. The bill currently has 205 cosponsors in the House of Representatives.

Norton has been a longtime leader for LGBT rights. After the District of Columbia passed its marriage equality law, Norton was successful in defeating several attempts in the House and Senate to repeal the law.