LGBT groups praise Obama’s picks for U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
Both appointees have a history of fighting for civil rights causes throughout their careers
LGBT advocates are praising President Barack Obama’s selection of two appointees to six-year terms on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. On Thursday, Obama appointed Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights Catherine Lhamon and attorney Debo Adegbile to the posts.
The bipartisan, independent commission advises the federal government on developing civil rights policy and enforcing federal nondiscrimination statutes. It routinely holds hearings and issues reports on the interpretation of U.S. civil rights laws. Recently, the commission endorsed the Obama administration’s guidance to schools regarding the treatment of transgender students, and issued a statement expressing concern over the increase in hate crimes in the United States. The Commission is required to investigate a federal agency every year and issue a report to the President, Vice President, Senate Majority Leader, and Speaker of the House.
As Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights, Lhamon has advocated on behalf of transgender students and has worked to improve the way college campuses deal with sexual assault. Adegbile, who previously served as senior counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and as acting president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, has argued multiple times before the U.S. Supreme Court, including when he defended the Voting Rights Act in 2008.
LGBT groups were ecstatic at the news of the nominations.
“Catherine Lhamon and Debo Adegbile have dedicated their careers to defending and strengthening our civil rights laws,” Sarah Warbelow, the legal director of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement. “As the Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights, Catherine Lhamon worked with educators and administrators across the country to ensure that transgender students were granted equal protection from discrimination in our nation’s schools and colleges. And from advocacy to litigation, Debo Adegbile has fought to protect the promise of our civil and voting rights laws in courthouses, at the Supreme Court, and on Capitol Hill.”
“We are so thrilled that these amazing leaders, who have already done so much work resisting injustice and speaking up for the rights of everyone, are being given the opportunity to continue their critical work on the Commission on Civil Rights,” added Mara Keisling, the executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. “We would also like to thank President Obama for continuing to take action to move civil rights forward through the very end of his administration.”
Eliza Byard, the executive director of GLSEN, also weighed in on the appointments, calling them “remarkable” and a “milestone in the ongoing struggle to fulfill our nation’s founding promise of justice for all.”
“Over more than 10 years with the NAACP, Adegbile fought employment and housing discrimination, led criminal justice reform efforts and repeatedly defended the Voting Rights Act, all areas for urgent focus in the Commission’s work in the years to come,” Byard said.
“Under Catherine Lhamon’s direction, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has become the foremost champion of our nation’s most at-risk youth, responding to a record number of complaints from student and families of all kinds who have turned to her office for assistance,” she added. “Lhamon has led OCR through a period of some of the most important action to ensure true educational equity since desegregation. She has been an unrelenting ally to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning students, protecting them from bullying, harassment and discrimination, and ensuring that schools address sexual harassment and assault in ways that do not harm the survivors.”
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