'I firmly believe that it’s time to address this injustice for every American,' Obama said. Obama signs LGBT executive order

President Barack Obama on Monday signed an executive order aimed at protecting workers at federal contractors and in the federal government from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

“I firmly believe that it’s time to address this injustice for every American,” Obama told a group of LGBT activists gathered in the East Room of the White House. Later, he added, “we’re on the right side of history.”


It’s a move that both answers years of calls for action from LGBT activists and serves as a reminder of the limits of presidential power. While the executive order applies to 30,000 companies employing 28 million workers — one-fifth of the U.S. workforce — it does not reach all employers nationwide.

The administration had held off on the order as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act made progress moving through Congress, including a bipartisan 64-32 vote in the Senate. But after months of inaction from the House, and as Obama responds to midterm pressures, the White House chose to act where it could this summer.

“I’m gonna do what I can with the authority I have” to protect workers, Obama said. “This is not speculative, this is not a matter of political correctness. People lose their jobs.”

The executive order, the president reminded the crowd, is just the latest development in the rapid expansion of rights for LGBT Americans. It’s a reminder, he said, of “extraordinary progress that we have made not just in our lifetimes but in the last five years, the last two years, the last one year.”

The president’s executive order amends orders signed by two of his predecessors. It alters order 11246, signed by Lyndon Johnson, which requires federal contractors not to discrimination on race, color, religion, sex or national origin, to include sexual orientation and gender identity. It also adds to order 11478, signed by Richard Nixon, which extends similar protections to federal employees.

The White House resisted the calls from some religious leaders — including Michael Wear, the head of religious outreach for Obama’s 2012 campaign, and Joel Hunter, the Florida megachurch pastor who is a close spiritual adviser to the president — for the order to include a wide-ranging exemption for contractors with religious affiliations, though it does maintain a 2002 amendment to Johnson’s order, signed in 2002 by George W. Bush, that allows those employers to favor workers of their own faith for religious roles, such as members of the clergy.

One of those who signed a letter calling for a broad exemption, Catholic University’s Stephen Schneck, said that he thinks the administration’s plan is workable. “With the help of the courts, I believe that the administration has left open a path that religious groups can work with and I applaud the important progress that it represents against LGBT discrimination,” he said in a statement.

Opposition remains. Peter Sprigg, senior fellow for policy at the Family Research Council, said in a statement that Obama is ordering “employers to put aside their principles and practices in the name of political correctness. This level of coercion is nothing less than viewpoint blackmail that bullies into silence every contractor and subcontractor who has moral objections to homosexual behavior. This order gives activists a license to challenge their employers and, expose those employers to threats of costly legal proceedings and the potential of jeopardizing future contracts.”

LGBT advocates, meanwhile, have been broadly positive about the executive order, describing it as an historic step that must be followed by congressional action on ENDA.

With the signing, “our nation will take a tremendous and long overdue step forward toward equality,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), who introduced the bill that passed the Senate in 2013. “This executive order ending discrimination for federal contractors sends a clear message that unequal and unfair treatment of Americans on the job has no place in our society.”