Kylar Broadus, right, was one of several people invited on stage with President Obama as he signed executive orders protecting LGBT workers earlier this year.

WASHINGTON — Advocates have had a tough time advancing federal LGBT workplace protections for decades — and yet, in the Obama era, one of the rare successes on that front has proven to be the most divisive.

How to best achieve the legal protections has become a contentious issue under the Obama administration. Advocates have had to make complex lobbying decisions: Should they push for new legislation to protect LGBT workers, executive action to help some LGBT workers, or both?

After President Obama took the executive action path off the table for the time being in April 2012, a federal agency — the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — gave transgender workers their biggest victory ever by ruling that the ban on "sex discrimination" in the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act includes anti-transgender discrimination.

Many LGBT groups, however, were slow to embrace the ruling at first, which is binding on the federal government but not courts — although they give deference to the agency ruling. As time wore on, more and more groups began embracing the decision — with a few LGBT groups taking cases to the EEOC on behalf of transgender clients. Even then, many groups have been loathe to highlight the EEOC decision, as they press for passage of the federal bill to ban LGBT job bias, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act; other federal efforts; or similar state efforts.

Now, with the legislative route basically closed to LGBT advancements for the remainder of the Obama administration with a newly elected Republican Congress, most LGBT organizations are pushing the EEOC ruling as a key tool for fighting discrimination — except one.

In a new graphic released last month, the National LGBTQ Task Force claimed that "[t]here are no federal protections for employment non-discrimination" for transgender people.

A commissioner of the EEOC, Chai Feldblum, says the Task Force is painting an "incomplete" picture of legal protections for LGBT people in America — specifically, by understating the work of the EEOC. Several other LGBT organizations, in comments to BuzzFeed News this week, echo that criticism, with a Human Right Campaign spokesman saying that "[t]he fact that it's incomplete makes it wrong."

The 2012 EEOC decision came from the case of Mia Macy, who challenged anti-transgender discrimination by bringing a complaint accusing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives of violating the Title VII ban on sex discrimination. The EEOC, in a unanimous decision, agreed with Macy — setting the agency and the federal government on a path in which that interpretation was reality. The Justice Department found in favor of Macy's claim a year later, and the EEOC began investigating other complaints of anti-transgender discrimination.

Asked about the graphic, Kylar Broadus, the Task Force's senior public policy counsel and Transgender Civil Rights Project director, said in a terse statement, "The Task Force follows the Macy decision rendered by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) which is an administrative agency and not a court of law. EEOC rulings are used as guidance by courts of law in most instances. Courts aren't bound by EEOC rulings but usually give great deference to them. Court decisions rendered by appeals courts become law. A case has to be brought to win or set precedent in a particular circuit which is why there is still need for a federal statute protecting workers."

Although EEOC rulings are not binding on the courts, courts do give deference to the agency's interpretation — and two federal appellate courts have, even before the Macy decision, had found that sex discrimination prohibitions under Title VII or the equal protection clause protected against anti-transgender discrimination. In recent months, moreover, the EEOC went beyond resolving complaints within the agency — filing lawsuits in Michigan and Florida using Title VII in suing companies for anti-transgender discrimination.

Finally, Broadus said in his statement, "A federal statute would provide protection across the country for everyone and curtail the need for more litigation."

The federal legislation, long sought by LGBT advocates, has been the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which provides explicit protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity and passed the Senate last year. It has no support from the Republican leadership in the current House, however, and last week's midterm election results make the chance of pro-LGBT legislation even more unlikely in the next Congress.

Feldblum, the first and only out LGBT EEOC commissioner, helped draft ENDA before her appointment to the EEOC and, in response to an inquiry from BuzzFeed News about the matter, noted that she, like the Task Force, continues to support the idea of such legislation, writing, "I agree that a strong federal law (one without any exemptions beyond those of current civil rights laws ) is very important to enact for purposes of certainty of protection."

Further, she noted, "I also agree that EEOC determinations are not binding on the courts. Indeed, our agency sometimes argues positions that are not accepted by the courts. So the statement ... is not wrong as a legal matter."

"But it is incomplete — both as a legal and practical matter," she countered. "It fails to capture the reality that the EEOC currently helps thousands of individuals each year get recourse (& remedies) for their discrimination claims, without ever going to court. And they get that through the legal system set up for administrative relief via the EEOC. And that is what our 53 EEOC offices across the country are now doing right now for LGBT people under our Title VII jurisdiction. Thus, there are practical remedies being achieved through the administrative system right now in every state in the country."

More than that, as noted, the agency has gone to court with their interpretation, bringing lawsuits last month in Michigan and Florida on behalf of transgender workers who faced employment discrimination.

"To begin where I started," Feldblum concluded, "that doesn't mean an explicit federal law is unnecessary. To the contrary, it would be hugely helpful. It's just important not to downplay the real practical protection that exists now."