Chai Feldblum

Chai Feldblum
Chai Feldblum picture in her Commissioner office
Chai Feldblum, August 2011.

Chai Rachel Feldblum (born April 1959)[1] is an American law professor at Georgetown University, author and activist for disability rights and LGBT rights.[2] In March 2010, she was appointed to a position on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) by President Barack Obama,[3] and in December 2010 she was confirmed to a full term on the EEOC by the United States Senate.[4]

Contents

Family and education

Chai Feldblum was born in New York City to Rabbi Meyer Simcha Feldblum and his wife Esther Yolles Feldblum. She grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home in the Washington Heights section of New York City.[5]

Her father was born in a small town in Lithuania . His town's entire Jewish community was killed in the Holocaust with the exception of him and a young girl. He survived by hiding in the forests of Poland and emigrated to the United States after the war. He was ordained as a Rabbi and received his Ph.D. in Talmudic studies.[6]

Her mother was raised in a strict Hasidic Jewish family in Philadelphia. She received her Ph.D. and was a professor at Brooklyn College. She focused her career on Jewish-Catholic relations and wrote at least two books on the subject, The American Catholic Press and the Jewish State, 1917-1959 and New Realities: Israel in the Holy Land.[7][8] She died in a car accident in 1974 at the age of 41.[9]

After Esther died, her husband remarried and emigrated to Israel where he died in 2002 of pancreatic cancer.[10][11]

Chai Feldblum attended the Yeshiva University High School for Girls in Queens, New York before majoring in Ancient Studies and Religion at Barnard College.[5] Feldblum received her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1985.[12][13] Coming from a long line of Orthodox Jewish rabbis [14] she had hoped to become one herself. When she learned that her family's branch of Judaism did not permit women rabbis, she decided to become an attorney.[11]

Career

After graduating from law school, Feldblum clerked for federal Judge Frank M. Coffin on the First Circuit Court of Appeals. After her clerkship there, she became a clerk for Justice Harry A. Blackmun on the U.S. Supreme Court.[12]

While working from 1988-1990[15] 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.[12]

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.[12] She founded and is the director of the university's Federal Legislation Clinic.[12]

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.[16][17] The CMS was the first organization to air a nationwide television commercial on a gay rights issue.[18]

In 2003, Feldblum became co-director of Georgetown's Workplace Flexibility 2010 project, which works to improve conditions for employers and employees.[13][19] The program focuses on flexible work arrangements (FWAs), including phased retirement, non-traditional scheduling and number of hours worked, telecommuting, and multiple points of exit and re-entry into the workforce.[20][21]

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

We believe that moral values matter in the governing of our polity. And we believe that Americans can articulate, and live up to, a more progressive set of moral values regarding sexuality, sexual orientation and gender equity. Sexuality can be a positive, important force in our lives. Heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality are all morally neutral. But the love that is expressed by those who are straight, gay or bisexual is morally good – and all equally morally good. All forms of gender are morally neutral. But lack of gender equity is morally bad.[22]

More recently, 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.[12] She also worked on passage of the ADA Amendments Act of 2008, and has testified before Congress on numerous occasions.[13]

EEOC nomination

In 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Feldblum for one of the seats on the five-member Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Conservative blogs and press outlets objected strenuously,[citation needed] but in response, in an October 10 speech to the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign, Obama stated:

Nobody in America should be fired because they’re gay, despite doing a great job and meeting their responsibilities. It’s not fair, it’s not right, we’re going to put a stop to it. And it’s for this reason if any of my nominees are attacked not for what they believe but for who they are, I will not waver in my support because I will not waver in my commitment to ending discrimination in all its forms. [23]

Protests have centered on Feldblum's identity as an out lesbian and her advocacy on orientation issues. A typical headline was If you hate America, you have a lawyer, authored by the Traditional Values Coalition and republished in Right Side News, in an article which referred to her as "a sort of general counsel to the Forces of Darkness."[24][25]

Of particular concern to them is Feldblum's signature on the 2006 statement of BeyondMarriage.Org, which supported legal recognition of a variety of non-traditional relationships besides marriage, including "Committed, loving households in which there is more than one conjugal partner," which the objectors consider an endorsement of polygamy.[26][27] In testimony before the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Feldblum testified that she did not believe in governmental endorsement of polygamy or polyamorous relationships,[28] consistent with her own writings in which she had always restricted such endorsement to non-sexual domestic partners.[29] She testified that she has therefore asked for her name to be removed from the Beyond Same-Sex Marriage document.

Objections have also been raised regarding her Supreme Court tenure as a clerk for Justice Blackmun. He authored the Roe v. Wade decision which recognized a nationwide right to legal abortion. Blackmun's opinion was written over ten years prior to Feldblum's clerkship for him, but organizations which oppose legal abortion express dismay over the connection regardless.[24][30]

Obama made a recess appointment of Feldblum and three other nominees to the EEOC on March 27, 2010.[31] On December 22, 2010, the U.S. Senate confirmed Feldblum to the seat on the EEOC for a term expiring July 1, 2013.[4]

Select bibliography

  • Sexual Orientation, Morality, and the Law: Devlin Revisited (1996).[15]
  • 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).[15]
  • Rectifying the Tilt: Equality Lessons from Religion, Disability, Sexual Orientation and Transgender, University of Maine Law Review (Tenth Annual Coffin Lecture) (2003).[12][15]
  • The Art of Legislative Lawyering and the Six Circles of Legislative Advocacy, 34 MCGEORGE LAW REVIEW 785 (2003).[12]
  • Gay is Good: The Moral Case for Marriage Equality and More, 17 Yale J.L. & Feminism 139-184 (2005).[13]
  • 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).[13]
  • Moral Conflict and Liberty: Gay Rights and Religion, 72 Brook. L. Rev. 61-123 (2006).[13]
  • 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).[13]

See also

P vip.svg Biography portal

References

  1. ^ Professor of Pride: Georgetown Law's Nan Hunter wields academic activism, November 27, 2008. MetroWeekly [Washington, DC].. Accessed October 11, 2009.
  2. ^ Biography: Chai Feldblum, Georgetown University. Accessed October 11, 2009.
  3. ^ http://blog.georgetownvoice.com/2010/03/29/two-georgetown-law-professors-tapped-by-obama-administration/
  4. ^ a b Keen, Lisa (2010-12-23). "Senate confirms Feldblum for EEOC". Keen News Service. http://www.keennewsservice.com/2010/12/23/senate-confirms-feldblum-for-eeoc/. Retrieved 2010-12-28. 
  5. ^ a b Orthodox-raised woman nominated as commissioner for EEOC, September 15, 2009. Voz iz neis? newspaper, Washington, DC. Accessed October 21, 2009.
  6. ^ http://help.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Feldblum.pdf
  7. ^ http://www.hmh.org/la_Blessing_Research.shtml
  8. ^ http://ram1.huji.ac.il:83/ALEPH/ENG/SAS/BAS/BAS/FIND-ACC/0367340
  9. ^ http://catalog.carr.org/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=12704419821FF.4945738&profile=hqc&uri=link=3100038~!459919~!3100001~!3100002&aspect=basic&menu=search&ri=2&source=~!horizon&term=Feldblum%2C+Esther+Yolles%2C+1933-1974.&index=PAUTHOR
  10. ^ Death Notice: Professor Rabbi Mayer Simcha Feldblum, August 11, 2002. New York Times, 1:35. Accessed October 11, 2009.
  11. ^ a b The POZ 50, August/September 1994. POZ magazine. Accessed October 11, 2009.
  12. ^ a b c d e f g h Georgetown Clinic Staff: Chai Feldblum, Georgetown University. Accessed October 11, 2009.
  13. ^ a b c d e f g Obama Nominates Chai Feldblum, LGBT/Equality Scholar, to EEOC Post, September 14, 2009. Accessed October 11, 2009.
  14. ^ Chai Feldblum Testimony, May 12, 1999. United States House Committee on the Judiciary. Accessed October 21, 2009.
  15. ^ a b c d Bio: Chai Feldblum, March 4, 2005. Yale Law School. Accessed October 14, 2009.
  16. ^ U.S. opposes court interference in gay troop ban, March 5, 1993. New York Times. Accessed October 11, 2009.
  17. ^ No Easy Path for Legal Assault on New Gay Policy, July 25, 1992. New York Times. Accessed October 11, 2009.
  18. ^ Campaign for Military Service: Ad Title "West", 1993. GLAAD Media Library. Accessed October 11, 2009.
  19. ^ Workplace Flexibility 2010, official site. Accessed October 11, 2009.
  20. ^ Workplace Flexibility: Definition, official website. Accessed October 11, 2009.
  21. ^ A Comprehensive Public Policy Platform on Flexible Work Arrangements: Executive Summary, 2004. Official website. Accessed October 11, 2009.
  22. ^ Moral Values Project, official website. Accessed October 11, 2009.
  23. ^ Obama Speaks to HRC, ThinkProgess.Org, October 10, 2009. Accessed October 11, 2009.
  24. ^ a b If you hate America, you have a lawyer, Traditional Values Coalition. Accessed October 11, 2009.
  25. ^ If you hate America, you have a lawyer, September 18, 2009. Right Side News. Accessed October 11, 2009.
  26. ^ Beyond Marriage: Full Statement, official website. Accessed October 11, 2009.
  27. ^ EEOC nominee supports polygamy, John Birch Society. Accessed October 11, 2009.
  28. ^ U.S. Senate HELP Committee Hearing on Nominations for Commissioner and for General Counsel of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
  29. ^ See "Gay is Good: The Moral Case for Marriage Equality and More", 17 Yale J.L. & Feminism 139-184 (2005).
  30. ^ Barack Obama Names Pro-Abortion ACLU Lawyer Chai Feldblum to EEOC Panel, October 5, 2009. Life News. Accessed October 11, 2009.
  31. ^ http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/president-obama-announces-recess-appointments-key-administration-positions

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