The Washington Post’s editorial board on Sunday called President Barack Obama‘s failure to sign an executive order protecting LGBT people employed by federal contractors “increasingly indefensible and inexplicable.” The Post notes “it’s time the president honor the promise he made five years ago.”
Calling the U.S. “a nation that has evolved rapidly toward supporting marriage equality,” The Post laments that America “continues to drag its feet on workforce fairness.”
The rejection of ENDA, a version of which was proposed as far back as the mid-1970s, has become something of a ritual: The act has been introduced in every Congress since 1994, save one.
President Obama could sign an executive order that would immediately protect gay and transgender employees of federal contractors from workplace discrimination.
Those contractors, which employ approximately 20 percent of the nation’s workforce, are currently prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion or sex, but aren’t subject to comparable provisions regarding sexual orientation or gender identity.
The order would not be unduly burdensome. After decades of urging by civil rights groups, more than 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies have adopted similar provisions of their own. Many contractors already abide without difficulty by these corporate codes protecting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees. Besides, there’s considerable precedent for the White House mandating that those who do business with the federal government do it fairly and don’t discriminate against their employees in the process. In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an order requiring that federal contractors adhere to principles of fair competition; in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson prohibited racial discrimination in contractors’ hiring processes.
The White House website says “President Obama also continues to support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and believes that our anti-discrimination employment laws should be expanded to include sexual orientation and gender identity.”
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney last week told the Washington Blade “the president is pursuing a path that he thinks has the best chance of success, which is trying to get Congress to pass ENDA, the legislative action that he supports.â€
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Image:Â President Barack Obama signs items after delivering remarks at the LGBT Leadership Council Gala in Beverly Hills, Calif., June 6, 2012. Official White House Photo by Pete Souza via Flickr