Freedom to Work’s Tico Almeida to be honored with Stevens Award
LGBT civil rights attorney selected for work in pushing for employment nondiscrimination protections
The Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation has announced it will honor LGBT civil rights attorney Tico Almeida of Freedom to Work with the 2016 Stevens Award. The award recognizes an attorney who has made “exemplary contributions to public service leadership through the law.”
Almeida, a former recipient of a Truman Scholarship in 1998 while a student at Duke University, used the scholarship to help fund his way through Yale Law School. He will be honored with the prestigious Stevens Award on June 1, the first day of LGBT Pride Month.
Almeida was chosen based on his lengthy and extensive resume. He previously worked as lead counsel on the proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act for the Committee on Education and Labor for the U.S. House of Representatives from 2007 to 2010, when Democrats controlled the lower chamber, drafting several portions of the bill and organizing committee hearings for the bill, as well as advocating on its behalf in a number of media appearances. He also advocated for immigrants and members of the Latino community as an attorney working with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the National Council of La Raza and the League of United Latin American Citizens.
Currently, Almeida heads Freedom to Work, the organization he helped found that seeks to prohibit anti-LGBT discrimination and harassment in the workplace. Almeida was one of several LGBT leaders who urged President Obama to sign an executive order prohibiting discrimination against the LGBT community at companies that receive federal contracts. He advocated for the confirmation of Obama’s nominees to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
Almeida has also done extensive work in the area of LGBT protections under Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination, partnering with Lambda Legal to successfully litigate the case of a Maryland transgender woman who was harassed at work because of her gender identity, and serving as legal advisor to David Baldwin, a gay air traffic controller who was allegedly denied a promotion based on his sexual orientation. The EEOC recently ruled that Baldwin could bring a civil suit against the Department of Transportation, which oversees the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), under Title VII.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly cited the transgender Title VII case on which Almeida served as co-counsel.
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