You Might Like
Honoring a Champion for Human Rights: Jacqueline Berrien
Post submitted by Mary Beth Maxwell, HRC Senior Vice President of Programs, Research and Training
The civil rights community lost an incredible champion for human rights far too soon. Jacqueline Berrien, former Chairwoman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and long-time civil rights attorney, died of cancer this month at age 53.
What is amazing is that in her too-short life she contributed decades of service and leadership in the most important civil and human rights issues of our time — serving at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Ford Foundation and in the Obama Administration. President Obama, who appointed her to the EEOC, recently said of Jackie that her “leadership and passion for ensuring everyone gets a fair chance to succeed in the workplace has changed our country for the better.”
She indeed fought for everyone. Under her leadership at the EEOC, the Commission took a more strategic and systematic approach to enforcing civil rights laws against employment discrimination – whether based on ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other characteristic
.
She ensured the EEOC was a force for justice for all of us. Beginning in 2011, the Commission began to apply a robust “sex-stereotyping” approach to protect LGBT individuals under existing federal sex discrimination law. In 2012, the Commission ruled that discrimination based on transgender status or gender identity is inherently a form of prohibited sex discrimination. In 2015, the Commission ruled that sexual orientation discrimination is also inherently a form of sex discrimination, prohibited under current law. Because of these rulings, the Commission has been able to help hundreds of LGBT people who have experienced employment discrimination over the past few years.
“Jackie Berrien was at the helm of the Commission as the agency began to interpret and enforce existing sex discrimination laws vigorously on behalf of LGBT people,” Chai Feldblum, fellow Commissioner who served with Berrien, said. “None of that work could have been done without Jackie’s commitment to issues of justice for all.”
Both of the President and Commissioner Feldblum’s are so true. And one other quote comes to mind – that of Audre Lorde, poet and activist who also died too young from cancer:
“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept and celebrate those differences.”
Years before so many of us saw the connections between our many movements for racial, gender, economic and LGBT justice, Jackie did.
Jacqueline Berrien was an incredible leader and a lovely human being. She looked you in the eye, flashed her warm smile and remembered your name. She expected big things of all of us because none of us are free until all of us are free — and all around us we know brothers and sisters are not free of violence or injustice. LGBT activists and leaders honor her, and her contribution to our humanity and our freedom.
You Might Like
