ABA Creates Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

Updated: In an effort to help eliminate bias against gays and transgender people in the legal profession and in society, the ABA has created a Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.

Chair of the commission is Jeffrey Gibson.

He says he hopes the commission will educate and encourage law firms to be more inclusive. The aim is to "make the tent a little bigger,” he says.

Gibson lives in San Francisco, where gays and transgenders may feel more free to reveal their orientation. "But I know a lot of people in Denver or Houston or Birmingham, Alabama, who do not feel that their their progress in their firms would be safe, or their judicial appointments would be secure, if they were to come out," he says.

The ABA’s Goal IX, as amended last February, promotes full participation of people with differing sexual orientations and gender identities in the legal profession. Previously, Goal IX only mentioned minorities, women and people with disabilities.

ABA President William H. Neukom of Seattle said in a press release that the new commission will help carry out the amendment. “Although much progress has been made to reduce bias in this area, numerous studies demonstrate that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people continue to face pervasive discrimination within the legal profession, as they do in many other walks of life,” Neukom said.

Updated on 12;9;2007 at 1:35 PM.