Bush backs policy against bias

President Bush yesterday backed the enforcement of workplace discrimination claims based on sexual orientation, challenging a decision by the head of the Office of Special Counsel to suspend enforcement in the federal workplace pending a legal analysis.

“The president believes that no federal employee should be subject to unlawful discrimination,” White House spokesman Trent Duffy said. “That’s long-standing federal policy that prevents discrimination based on sexual orientation.”

Mr. Duffy said federal agencies “will fully enforce the law against discrimination, including discrimination based on sexual orientation.”

On Wednesday, congressional Democrats called on Mr. Bush to either overturn a Feb. 27 decision by Special Counsel Scott J. Bloch to suspend enforcement of cases or to fire him.

Mr. Bloch had removed references to discrimination based on sexual orientation from the agency’s Web site, complaint forms and federal training manuals.

“The president should insist Mr. Bloch follow the law and enforce decades of federal employment policies, or fire Mr. Bloch,” Rep. Elliot L. Engel, New York Democrat, said during a news conference Wednesday. “A member of George Bush’s administration is altering decades of federal employment policy based on some of the shoddiest legal reasoning I have seen in my professional career.”

Named last year by Mr. Bush to head the office, Mr. Bloch said sexual orientation was not mentioned as a basis for discrimination in civil rights laws or in the statute under which OSC operated. He called for a review of the “legal issues,” saying it would take several weeks.

Mr. Bloch was not available yesterday for comment. An agency spokeswoman told reporters OSC had not been contacted by the White House but was formulating a response.

OSC’s primary mission is to safeguard the merit system by protecting federal employees and applicants from prohibited personnel practices, including discrimination, sexual harassment and reprisals against whistleblowers.

“It is critical that this agency be especially careful not to engage in the kind of extralegal enforcement actions that we prosecute on a daily basis,” Mr. Bloch said in announcing the analysis. “That is why we must be especially precise in reviewing the proper limitations of this agency’s enforcement powers.”

In a letter this week to Rep. Barney Frank, Massachusetts Democrat who also opposed the Bloch ruling, former Special Counsel Elaine Kaplan said it was unlawful to discriminate against a federal employee or applicant “on the basis of conduct which does not adversely affect the performance of the employee or the applicant or the performance of others.”

Ms. Kaplan said OSC, during her tenure, interpreted this provision to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.

“In adopting this interpretation, we relied upon the fact that it promoted the fundamental merit system principle that government employees and job applicants should be judged solely on the basis of their job performance,” she wrote.

In 1998, President Clinton signed an executive order that prohibited sexual orientation discrimination in the federal government. That policy remains in effect at the Office of Personnel Managementa.