GOP Senator Blocks Reappointment Of Lesbian EEOC Commissioner Over Her “Radical Views On Marriage”
Members of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency that enforces civil rights laws in the workplace, are routinely reconfirmed in a bipartisan manner.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, however, is bucking the norm by putting a hold on the reappointment of Chai Feldblum, the first openly LGBTQ person to sit on the commission, because of her “radical views on marriage.”
“One nominee to the commission’s five-member board wants to use the federal agency’s power to undermine our nation’s founding principles,” Lee wrote on his website earlier this year. “Don’t think for a second that you, your family, and your neighbors will be left alone if Feldblum gets her way,” he wrote.
Lee is the Senate author of the so-called First Amendment Defense Act, which would legalize anti-LGBT discrimination nationwide for business owners who act on a “sincerely-held religious belief or moral conviction.”
His bill, which has not yet been reintroduced in the US House, presently has 22 Senate cosponsors. Earlier this year Trump interviewed him for the SCOTUS nomination that eventually went to Brett Kavanaugh.