Chai Feldblum

Chai Rachel Feldblum (born April 1959)Professor of Pride: Georgetown Law's Nan Hunter wields academic activism
November 27, 2008. MetroWeekly ashington, DC. Accessed October 11, 2009. is an American author and activist for disability and LGBT rights.Biography: Chai Feldblum

Georgetown University Law Center
Accessed October 11, 2009. A former law professor at Georgetown University Law Center, she served as Commissioner at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. She was nominated to the position on the EEOC by president Barack Obama in 2009. In April 2010, she received a recess appointment to the EEOC, and in December 2010 she was confirmed to serve on the EEOC by the United States Senate. The Senate confirmed her in December 2013 for a second term on the Commission which expired in July 2018.

Early life and education

Chai Feldblum was born in New York City to Meyer Simcha and Esther Feldblum. Meyer Simcha Feldblum was born in Lithuania and survived the Holocaust by living in the forests of Poland.Pollak, Suzanne (July 22, 2015).
Out in Front: Openly gay EEOC commissioner feels 'blessed'
(subscription required). ''Washington Jewish Week''. He came to the United States following WWII, where he earned his ordination and Ph.D. from Yeshiva University in New York City and became a rabbi and a professor of Talmud, first at Yeshiva University and then at Bar Ilan University in Israel. Esther Feldblum was the daughter of Rabbi Ephraim Eliezer Yolles, a Hasidic Rebbe (the Samborer Rebbe) of Philadelphia. Esther Feldblum received her Ph.D. in Jewish history from Columbia University and taught for one year at Brooklyn College before dying in a car accident at the age of 41. Her dissertation, ''The American Catholic Press and the Jewish State: 1917-1959'', was published as a book posthumously.

Chai Feldblum grew up in Washington Heights in New York City.Orthodox-raised woman nominated as commissioner for EEOC
September 15, 2009. ''Voz iz neis?'' newspaper, Washington, DC. Accessed October 21, 2009. Her Orthodox Jewish upbringing shaped her commitment to social justice work.

Chai Feldblum attended the Yeshiva University High School for Girls in Queens, New York before majoring in Ancient Studies
and Religion at Barnard College in the class of 1979. Feldblum received her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1985.Obama Nominates Chai Feldblum, LGBT/Equality Scholar, to EEOC Post
, September 14, 2009. Accessed October 11, 2009. Coming from a long line of Orthodox Jewish rabbis
, May 12, 1999. United States House Committee on the Judiciary. Accessed October 21, 2009. she once aspired to be a talmudic scholar. She left Orthodox Judaism by the time she was a "young adult."http://www.equalrightstrust.org/ertdocumentbank/Interview%20-%20Equality%20in%20Employment.pdf

Career

After graduating from law school, Feldblum clerked for federal Judge Frank M. Coffin on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and then for Justice Harry A. Blackmun on the Supreme Court of the United States.

While working from 1988 to 1990Bio: Chai Feldblum
, March 4, 2005. Yale Law School. Accessed October 14, 2009. as Legislative Counsel to the AIDS Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, Feldblum was the lead attorney on the team drafting the Americans with Disabilities Act, which became law in 1990.

She joined the faculty of Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, DC in 1991, teaching classes on "legislative lawyering," a phrase she coined to describe the work of the attorneys who craft or lobby for legislation. She founded and is the director of the university's Federal Legislation Clinic.

Since joining Georgetown, Feldblum has continued her own legislative lawyering career. In 1993, she was the legal director for the Campaign for Military Service, a group which lobbied to overturn policies forbidding gay and bisexual people from serving openly in the U.S. armed forces.U.S. opposes court interference in gay troop ban
March 5, 1993. New York Times. Accessed October 11, 2009. The CMS was the first organization to air a nationwide television commercial on a gay rights issue.Campaign for Military Service: Ad Title "West"
, 1993. GLAAD Media Library. Accessed October 11, 2009.

In 2003, Feldblum became co-director of Georgetown's Workplace Flexibility 2010 project, which works to improve conditions for employers and employees.Workplace Flexibility 2010
, official site. Accessed October 11, 2009. The program focuses on flexible work arrangements (FWAs), including phased retirement, non-traditional flextime and working time, remote work, and multiple points of exit and re-entry into the workforce.

In 2006, she founded the Moral Values Project, with the mission statement:

She was the lead drafter of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would prohibit employment discrimination based on someone's real or perceived sexual orientation. She also worked on passage of the ADA Amendments Act of 2008, and has testified before Congress on numerous occasions.

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

In 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Feldblum for one of the seats on the five-member Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In response to attacks on her, Obama stated in an October 10 speech to the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign:

Following her nomination, Feldblum came under attack on various grounds. In testimony before the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Feldblum testified that claims that she believed in governmental endorsement of polygamy or polyamorous relationships were wrong, consistent with her own writings in which she had always restricted such endorsement to non-sexual domestic partners.

Obama made a recess appointment of Feldblum and three other nominees to the EEOC on March 27, 2010. On December 22, 2010, the U.S. Senate confirmed Feldblum to the seat on the EEOC for a term expiring July 1, 2013. She is openly lesbian and became the first openly LGBT person to serve on the EEOC.

In 2013, Feldblum was nominated by President Obama to serve a second term on the EEOC, expiring on July 1, 2018. On December 9, 2013, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid filed for cloture on Feldblum's nomination. On December 11, 2013, the Senate voted 57–39 to break the filibuster, paving the way for a final vote on Feldblum's nomination. On December 12, 2013, Feldblum was confirmed to a second term in a 54–41 vote. Feldblum was nominated for a third term on the EEOC by President Donald Trump, but her nomination wa
blocked
by Senator Mike Lee.

After the EEOC

In March 2019, Feldblum became a partner at the law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, stating to ''Bloomberg Law'' that the move from public service to a " Big Law management-side firm", considered unusual, was the best way to help employers implement the workplace harassment guidelines outlined by herself and Victoria Lipnic at the EEOC. She described the firm as "the place from which to help make that institutional change", of preventing harassment from happening in the workplace. Feldblum left the firm in March 2021, after helping to expand the firm's DEI and respectful workplace practice.

In November 2020, Feldblum was named a volunteer member of the Joe Biden presidential transition Agency Review Team to support transition efforts related to the United States Department of Justice.

AbilityOne Commission

President Joe Biden appointed Feldblum to the AbilityOne Commission in August 2021 and she was subsequently elected vice chair of the commission. During Feldblum's first year on the commission, she helped develop a new strategic plan for the commission that would modernize the program.

Personal life

Feldblum is a lesbian. She is married to Nan D. Hunter.

Select bibliography

* Sexual Orientation, Morality, and the Law: Devlin Revisited (1996).
* The Federal Gay Civil Rights Bill: From Bella to ENDA in ''Creating Change: Sexuality, Public Policy, & Civil Rights'' ( J. D'Emilio, W. Turner & U. Vaid eds. 2000).
* Rectifying the Tilt: Equality Lessons from Religion, Disability, Sexual Orientation and Transgender, University of Maine Law Review (Tenth Annual Coffin Lecture) (2003).
* The Art of Legislative Lawyering and the Six Circles of Legislative Advocacy, 34 McGeorge L. Rev. 785 (2003).
* Gay is Good: The Moral Case for Marriage Equality and More, 17 Yale J.L. & Feminism 139-184 (2005).
* The Definition of Disability in the Americans With Disabilities Act: Its Successes and Shortcomings, 9 Emp. Rts. & Emp. Pol'y J. 473-498 (2005) (co-authored piece).
* Moral Conflict and Liberty: Gay Rights and Religion, 72 Brook. L. Rev. 61-123 (2006).
* The Right to Define One's Own Concept of Existence: What ''Lawrence'' Can Mean for Intersex and Transgender People, 7 Geo. J. Gender & L. 115-139 (2006).

See also

* List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States (Seat 2)

References

External links

Testimony of Chai Feldblum on the Religious Liberty Protection Act of 1999
May 12, 1999, United States House Committee on the Judiciary

Testimony of Chai Feldblum: Introductory Biographical Statement
November 19, 2009, United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Feldblum, Chai
1959 births
Living people
Barnard College alumni
American disability rights activists
Georgetown University Law Center faculty
Harvard Law School alumni
Law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States
Recess appointments
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission members
LGBT appointed officials in the United States
American lesbian writers
LGBT Jews
LGBT people from New York (state)
American LGBT rights activists
Women legal scholars
21st-century LGBT people
21st-century American women