Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

This paper will present findings of a study that assesses the impact of President Obama’s 2014 executive order forbidding federal contractors to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI). We analyze data on employees’ individual charges of SOGI discrimination filed since the EEOC began interpreting SOGI discrimination as sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act from 2012-2016. We match the charge data to the EEOC’s EEO-1 of establishments to create a pooled cross-section dataset of establishments with and without charges. The EEO-1 data provide information on federal contractor receipt, race and gender composition of employment, and detailed industry. We use economic theories of discrimination and sociological theories of legal consciousness to create measures of factors that predict whether a charge is filed (dependent variable 1) and whether a charge is found to have some merit (dependent variable 2). After controlling for those measures, we look for the annual impact of being a federal contractor in the years after the policy change. Our hypotheses are that the executive order will result in a greater likelihood of a charge (based on legal consciousness theory) but a lower likelihood of a charge with merit (based on discrimination theory). Our preliminary results confirm hypothesis one, as we see an increase in filing of charges against federal contractors in the years the executive order is signed and implemented.