American Civil Liberties Union

On Tuesday afternoon, over 70 members of Congress sent a letter to President Obama urging him to sign an executive order to ensure that federal contractors receiving tax dollars do not discriminate against applicants and employees based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

The ACLU views this executive order as the single most important step that President Obama could take this year to eradicate anti-LGBT discrimination from American workplaces. The impact of such an executive order would be immense, and provides the opportunity to create a tipping point moment with employment protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity covering more than half of the American workforce.

This Thursday, June 26, the House Education and Labor Committee's Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions will hold a hearing on discrimination against transgender employees. Congressman Robert Andrews (D-NJ) will chair this historic hearing, the first Congressional hearing on transgender issues and gender identity discrimination in the workplace.

Diane Schroer, an ACLU client, will be one of the witnesses. Schroer was an Airborne Ranger qualified Special Forces officer who completed over 450 parachute jumps, received numerous decorations including the Defense Superior Service Medal, and was hand-picked to head up a classified national security operation. She began taking steps to transition from male to female shortly after retiring as a Colonel after 25 years of distinguished service in the Army. When she interviewed for a job as a terrorism research analyst at the Library of Congress, she thought she'd found the perfect fit, given her background and 16,000-volume home library collection on military history, the art of war, international relations and political philosophy. Schroer accepted the position, but when she told her future supervisor that she was in the process of gender transition, they rescinded the job offer. The ACLU is now representing her in a Title VII sex discrimination lawsuit against the Library of Congress.

Click here to learn more about Diane's case. Her story was also highlighted in the recent ACLU report, "Working in the Shadows: Ending Employment Discrimination For LGBT Americans."

Shannon Minter, the legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights (who successfully argued the recent marriage case before the California Supreme Court), will discuss some of the legal issues affecting the transgender community. The committee will also hear testimony from a transgender employee working in a Massachusetts HIV/AIDS service organization and a representative from a Fortune 500 company that protects its employees against gender identity discrimination.

The hearing will be broadcast live on the web at 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, June 26. Click here for a link to the webcast.

If your Congressperson serves on the Subcommittee, please call their office and ask that they attend the hearing. Call 202-225-3121 and ask for your representative's office.

On Thursday, the ACLU, as well as partner organizations, will speak at a congressional briefing hosted by Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) on the subject of sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination in the workplace and the steps that can be taken to prevent such discrimination.

The ACLU has long fought for passage in Congress of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, legislation that would prohibit employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in most American workplaces. ENDA will allow all American workers who stand side-by-side at the workplace and contribute with equal measure in their jobs to also stand on equal footing under the law. However, the current political reality is that ENDA cannot pass this Congress. This does not, however, close off all avenues for addressing the underlying problem of workplace discrimination against LGBT Americans.