President Donald Trump intends to maintain an Obama-eraexecutive order aimed at protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual andtransgender federal workers and contractors from workplacediscrimination, the White House said Tuesday.
|Related: How much has same-sex marriage changed employeebenefits?
|Trump “is determined to protect the rights of all Americans,including the LGBTQ community,” according to the statement.
|The statement was issued after reports Monday on news websitesand social media that a draft order was circulating in Washingtonwhich would have repealed action taken in 2014 by then-PresidentBarack Obama that applied to all federal agencies as well asto 24,000 companies with federal contracts that employ 28 millionpeople, a fifth of the U.S. workforce.
|Related: Employers expect increases in LGBT discriminationclaims
|Protections on the basis of sexual orientation for federalemployees were already in place when Obama expanded them to includegender identity and to also require all federal contractors to havepolicies barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientationand gender identity. He chose not to include an exemption foremployers affiliated with religious groups, something that Trumpcould still decide to add.
|The reports on Monday also suggested that the Trumpadministration was considering an order that would have allowedfederal employees to refuse to serve LGBT people; given federallyfunded adoption agencies the option of discriminating against LGBTparents; and allowed taxpayer funds to go toward social servicesprograms that discriminate against LGBT people.
|Related: Ruling: Civil Rights Act protects LGBTworkers
|White House press secretary Sean Spicer was asked Monday if theadministration had plans for executive actions that would cut intoLGBT rights.
|“I’m not getting ahead of the executive orders that we may ormay not issue,” Spicer said. “There is a lot of executive orders, alot of things that the president has talked about and will continueto fulfill, but we have nothing on that front now.”
|Copyright 2018 Bloomberg. All rightsreserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten,or redistributed.
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