Chai Rachel Feldblum (born April 1959), November 27, 2008. MetroWeekly [Washington, DC].. Accessed October 11, 2009. is an American legal scholar and activist for disability and LGBT rights who served as a private citizen commissioner for the United States AbilityOne Commission from 2021 to 2025. A member of the Democratic Party, she served as a commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from 2010 to 2018.Biography: Chai Feldblum , Georgetown University Law Center. Accessed October 11, 2009.

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."Paid Notice: Deaths: Feldblum, Professor Rabbi Mayer Simcha" (August 11, 2002). New York Times. Retrieved November 12, 2016. 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.Penkower, Monty N. (December 1978). Review of The American Catholic and the Jewish State, 1917–1959, by Esther Yolles Feldblum. American Jewish History. Vol. 68, No. 2, p. 236–239. . See also product description for book on Amazon.com.

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.

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. Retrieved October 11, 2009.

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. Retrieved 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.

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.No Easy Path for Legal Assault on New Gay Policy, July 25, 1992. 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, a program developed to improve conditions for employers and employees.Workplace Flexibility 2010 , official site. Accessed October 11, 2009. The program focused 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.Workplace Flexibility: Definition , official website. Accessed October 11, 2009.A Comprehensive Public Policy Platform on Flexible Work Arrangements: Executive Summary , 2004. Official website. Accessed October 11, 2009.

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.See "Gay is Good: The Moral Case for Marriage Equality and More", 17 Yale J.L. & Feminism 139–184 (2005).

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 was 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."EEOC's Feldblum One of Few Labor Officials to Cross Party Lines" by Stephanie Russell-Kraft, Bloomberg Law, March 14, 2019. Retrieved April 11, 2019. 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 for the second seat of the Supreme Court of the United States

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