Chai Feldblum

Chai Rachel Feldblum (born April 1959) 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.

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. 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. 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.

Chai Feldblum grew up in Washington Heights in New York City.

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.

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. 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. The CMS was the first organization to air a nationwide television commercial on a gay rights issue.

In 2003, Feldblum became co-director of Georgetown's Workplace Flexibility 2010 project, a program developed to improve conditions for employers and employees. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 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).