The federal government protects LGBT federal employees from job discrimination. Yet, it still funnels almost $300 billion each year to businesses that can discriminate.
- Federal government employees have specific nondiscrimination protections stemming from two Presidential executive orders. These orders protect federal government workers based on “race, color, religion, sex, national origin, handicap and age”—and, as of 1998, sexual orientation. A 2012 EEOC decision finds that transgender federal workers are protected under prohibitions on discrimination based on a worker’s “sex.”
- Unfortunately, these protections do not extend to LGBT employees of companies that do business with the federal government.
- In 2012 alone, $293 billion contract dollars were awarded in states that have no state-level nondiscrimination protections for gender identity/expression, with $249 billion of that total going to states that also have no protections for sexual orientation.
- More than 60% of the 25 states that received $5 billion or more in federal contracts in 2012 have no employment nondiscrimination laws explicitly covering sexual orientation—and 68% lack laws covering gender identity.
- Subsidizing discrimination with taxpayer money is a lose/lose proposition—and it breaks America’s basic bargain that workers will judged and rewarded based on their contributions and capabilities, not what they look like, who they are, or who they love. It’s bad for workers and bad for America’s competitiveness.
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