The Coalition for Jewish Values today sharply criticized the Trump Administration for re-nominating Chai Feldblum to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Feldblum, a Democrat and LGBT activist, cast the deciding vote when the EEOC termed it “unlawful sex discrimination” to limit locker and shower facilities to those of a single biological gender, and has consistently shown a disregard for religious rights.
In 2012, Feldblum was part of the EEOC when the US Supreme Court unanimously rejected its position, which Chief Justice John Roberts characterized as claiming “that the Religion Clauses have nothing to say about a religious organization’s freedom to select its own ministers.”
“Feldblum has been truly unfriendly to accommodation of religious views,” said Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, Eastern Regional Vice President of the CJV. “The decision to renew her nomination seems jarringly discordant with the Trump Administration’s overall support for religious liberty.”
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In 2006, Feldblum said that “the need to protect the dignity of gay people will justify burdening religious belief… I’m having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win… in almost all cases the sexual liberty should win.” Although she later asserted that she was misquoted, she has yet to explain how the statement contradicts her actual views.
“The idea that everything must be subservient to the ‘dignity’ of homosexuals can easily be used to trample freedom of religion,” said Rabbi Avrohom Gordimer, Chairman of the CJV Rabbinic Circle. “It is not merely true that she is partisan. To us it is akin to putting an avid hunter on the board of PETA.”