Today the United States Department of Justice argued in court that federal civil rights law does not protect employees from discrimination based on sexual orientation. Coming just a day after the President of the United States declared that transgender individuals were not suited to serve in the United States military, this is a clear slap in the face to every member of the LGBT community.

We stand in solidarity with the director of the American Civil Liberties Union LGBT and HIV Project, who called this step by the DOJ a “gratuitous and extraordinary attack on LGBT people’s civil rights,” and with the Human Rights Campaign, which said “today's filing is a shameful retrenchment of an outmoded interpretation that forfeits faithful interpretation of current law to achieve a politically-driven and legally specious result.”

We cannot remain silent while the Trump Administration attempts to legalize discrimination and reverse decades of progress toward a more equitable society where every human being has the right to be treated with dignity and respect.

We urge our constituents and every concerned citizen to contact their elected officials and let them know that this attack on our community is not acceptable.