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JPMorgan’s Leaders Condemn Rollback of Transgender Protections

JPMorgan’s Leaders Condemn Rollback of Transgender Protections

(Bloomberg) -- JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s senior-most leaders voiced their support for LGBT rights Monday, criticizing the Trump administration’s move to eliminate nondiscrimination protections for transgender people and praising the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on workplace protections.

“Our commitment to supporting LGBT+ issues is enduring because supporting our colleagues, suppliers and clients in the U.S. and around the world is, most importantly, the right thing to do, and it also makes good business sense,” the bank’s 12-person operating committee, which includes Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon, said in a memo to staff Monday.

Dimon has become a spokesman for Wall Street thanks to his frequent public appearances, outspokenness on public policy and almost 15-year tenure atop the biggest and most-profitable U.S. bank. He has challenged other CEOs to get more involved in social and public policy, saying progress on problems will be more difficult if companies and their leaders don’t step up.

A divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that federal law protects gay and transgender workers from job discrimination. The watershed decision gives millions of LGBT people in dozens of states civil rights they had sought for decades.

Three days earlier, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services finalized a rule that removed women seeking abortions and LGBT people from the Affordable Care Act’s nondiscrimination protections. The regulation allows health-care workers, hospitals and insurance companies that receive federal funding to refuse to provide or cover services such as abortions and transition-related care.

“This decision was wrong,” JPMorgan’s leaders wrote, “and it underscores the importance of our strong support of the Equality Act, a bipartisan bill currently being considered in Congress that would explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation and gender identity across multiple facets of daily life, including in the workplace, but also in banking, credit, housing and education, among others.”

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