“The damage that could be done here cannot be overstated,” added McGowan, who said one-fifth of the federal workforce is employed through contractors. “So instead, this Administration is trying to accomplish the same end through different means.” “This Administration apparently recognizes - correctly, in our view - that rescinding executive order outright would cause a huge public outcry,” she told BuzzFeed News. Sharon McGowan, a former lawyer in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, and now the legal director of the LGBT group Lambda Legal, said the new directive attempts to “immunize” federal contractors who discriminate. 10 of this year, the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) quietly issued Directive 2018-03, which broadly expanded the rights of businesses with federal contracts to raise a 'religious exemption' if they’re accused of discrimination. The White House promised to safeguard a 2014 executive order that protects workers, announcing former President Obama’s ban on anti-LGBT discrimination by federal contractors 'will remain intact.'īut on Aug.
President Donald Trump offered skeptical LGBT Americans an olive branch when he took office in January 2017.
