This week, the Office of Public Management (OPM) issued a memo urging federal agencies to “robustly protect and enforce” federal employees’ right to engage in religious expression in the workplace. This right includes efforts of employees to persuade others of the correctness of their religious views, encourage them to pray or attend religious services, and display religious items, such as crosses and religious posters, in the workplace.

While the five-page memo briefly mentions the limits on this religious expression—it can’t be harassing in nature, and employees can’t be disciplined for disagreeing or declining to participate—the memo’s major chord pushes religious expression rather than preventing discrimination and harassment.

For LGBTQ people employed by the federal government, the memo does not merely overlook discrimination; it endorses it.

In two national surveys conducted by the Williams Institute in 2021 and 2023, over half of employees who experienced discrimination or harassment reported that the mistreatment was motivated by religious beliefs, including almost two-thirds (64%) of LGBT employees of color and 40% of public sector employees.

Why did employees feel their negative treatment in the workplace was motivated by religion? In almost all cases, because the people discriminating told them so. In response to our 2021 survey, over one-third of those who reported religiously motivated discrimination were told something that God believed or required, such as God “hates gay people,” “only made two genders,” is “against marriage equality, “doesn’t want people to be publicly gay,” and doesn’t want “LGBTQ people at work.” 

Many of the stories that respondents shared with us echo what the OPM memo encourages. For example, the memo specifies that “during a break, an employee may discuss why his faith is correct and why the non-adherent should rethink his religious beliefs.” The “religious beliefs” that LGBTQ employees are asked to rethink are related to their identity and moral values.

The OPM memo also states that “an employee may invite another to worship at her church despite belonging to a different faith.” For LGBTQ employees, often these aren’t just invitations to religious services, but a request to change their core identity. As a nonbinary employee from Washington shared, “I received encouragement to go to church and reconsider who I am.” Respondents to our survey reported being repeatedly asked by coworkers and supervisors to pray and attend church services. They also received religious pamphlets at work and were told to seek “conversion therapy.”

The findings from our survey also make clear that these religious beliefs are not always “politely” shared but frequently justify and accompany conduct that is clearly unlawful. As a lesbian respondent to our survey from South Carolina shared about her coworkers, “They quoted a Bible verse and said it is their God-given right to treat anyone who is gay badly.”

The unlawful conduct that religious beliefs justified included all types of workplace discrimination and harassment. For instance, a bisexual woman from Texas was told “to go to hell during a job interview for liking women.” Another lesbian employee from South Carolina shared that when her boss learned she did not have a male partner, he “withdrew an offer for promotion, saying that I was an abomination and did not align with God’s vision.”

For some, religious beliefs even justified physical and sexual assault. A gay man from Pennsylvania reported that his attackers said that “because I was an abomination, they could do whatever they wanted and God would be OK with it.” A bisexual woman from Virginia shared that she was assaulted by a coworker “who told me he was enacting ‘God’s will’ on me.”

Of course, the OPM memo doesn’t endorse unlawful discrimination that extends beyond religious expression, but when LGBTQ people encounter religiously motivated discrimination and harassment in the workplace, what are their options?

According to the OPM memo, they can ask that the proselytizing stop and decline invitations to engage in religious practices or services. However, the OPM memo makes it clear that there should be no difference between what a coworker can do and what a supervisor can ask of their direct reports. Imagine being the nonbinary employee from Connecticut who was forced to pray with their supervisor before he ate and withstand requests every Friday to attend his church. “He would say, ‘If you really want to be saved and forgiven, please meet me there for 10 AM service this Sunday.’” To reject these religious advances from a boss would risk your job. 

If LGBTQ employees can’t respond directly, they are left with the options of staying in the closet or looking for another job, if they can find one. As research by the Williams Institute and others has shown, both of those options have significant health and economic costs for employees as well as employers.

When examining religiously motivated workplace discrimination, it’s important to note that the majority of adherents to most religious denominations in the United States support LGBTQ rights, and many LGBTQ people are also people of faith.

According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, the only sizeable denominations in the U.S. where a majority of members still say that “homosexuality should be discouraged” are Evangelicals (61%), Muslims (55%), and Mormons (50%). But even that paints with too broad a brush. Only 36% of members of historically Black Protestant churches think homosexuality should be discouraged. You have to combine race (white) and denomination (Evangelical) to pinpoint the primary faith with a majority of anti-LGBTQ members.

Further, many LGBTQ people are also people of faith. A 2020 Williams Institute study found that nearly half (47%) of LGBT adults in the U.S. are religious. The rates are even higher for LGBT people of color, where 71% of Black LGBT adults and 57% of Latinx adults consider themselves religious.

So, what the OPM sets up for some is not a clash between religion and LGBTQ rights, but a clash between religious beliefs. A bisexual respondent from Illinois wrote, “I am a Christian myself, and a lot of other Christians say that God would not love anybody who is a part of the LGBTQ community.” In contrast, some LGBTQ employees reported that what runs counter to their religious beliefs is discrimination against LGBTQ people.

In the first six months of the Trump Administration, LGBTQ federal workers have been stripped of civil rights protections that prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity. They have been denied health care benefits that provide gender affirming care for their families and have seen support for DEI and LGBTQ Pride programs and events abandoned and prohibited. For those who remain in federal service, this week’s OPM memo greenlights some of the most common forms of discrimination and harassment that LGBTQ workers face. It contains nothing that would prevent the promotion of religious expression from being extended to the private sector, impacting not only LGBTQ workers, but employees from many faiths, who are not religious, or who are viewed as sinners by Evangelicals. 

Brad Sears is the Distinguished Senior Scholar of Law and Policy at the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law.

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