On Monday, President Trump rescinded an Executive Order implemented in the Obama era which provided protections to LGBT Americans working for federal contractors.
Though he had earlier said he would not repeal the order in the face of substantial resistance in the weeks after his Inauguration, Trump apparently hoped that he could do the Republican party’s bidding hidden under the cover of endless scandals and reckless legislation.
Executive Order 13673, the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces order, was signed by President Obama in 2014. The order required that all federal contractors provide proof that they were adhering to all federal laws and Executive orders, including one passed in tandem requiring contracts to include LGBT workers as a protected class.
For the first time, the order provided protections to employees of federal contractors who are LGBT, guaranteeing that they could not be terminated or discriminated against in the workplace on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
The order was notable because it served as the one and only legal order or law protecting LGBT Americans from job discrimination. While no states in the U.S. provide protections to all LGBT workers as they do on the basis of age, race, or gender, this federal order protected around one million LGBT Americans.
Now those individuals are on the same footing as the rest of the LGBT community in America – vulnerable to firings on the basis of their identity at a moment’s notice.
Rather than working to expand the rights of LGBT Americans in the workplace as the forward progression of society would dictate, Trump buckled to the pressure of his conservative party and rolled back federal regulations that were nothing but a net good for society.
Any indication that President Trump has given in the past that he would be good for the LGBT community has been completely and utterly disproved. Just like the majority of his other promises, this one, too, was nothing more than a politically-convenient lie.
