Obama to Order Transgender Protections

On Monday, President Obama announced that his office is working on an executive order to protect federal employees from gender identity-based discrimination. Lesbian and gay federal employees are already protected from workplace discrimination, but the Obama administration is planning to expand those protections to transgendered individuals. While Obama already announced in June an executive order prohibiting federal contractors from LGBT discrimination, the new directive would specifically ban firing or refusing to hire someone based on their gender identity. Currently, only 18 of the 50 states have laws on the books banning LGBT employee discrimination, and an additional three have protections for just lesbian and gay employees.