New Trump rule gives federal contractors a license to discriminate against LGBTQ people

President Donald Trump
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Donald Trump’s Department of Labor issued a final rule yesterday allowing federal contractors increased rights to discriminate against racial minorities, women, and LGBTQ people if they claim that their business’s religious beliefs would be violated by following anti-discrimination laws.

The new rule creates “a near-limitless license to discriminate,” according to Slate‘s Mark Joseph Stern. The new rule effectively takes job protections away from four million American workers.

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The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) at the Department of Labor has been working on this rule change since at least 2018, and in 2019 released an official proposal for a rule that would make it easier for for-profit businesses to claim that anti-discrimination rules violate their religious beliefs.

President Lyndon Johnson signed the first executive order that created the protections for employees of federal contractors and protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity were later added to it. President George W. Bush then created a religious exemption to the executive order that allowed religious nonprofits to claim a religious exemption.

Trump’s expansion allows for…

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