Yesterday The administration officially endorsed the amending of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to protect LGBT Americans from discrimination.

As of yet, there is no federal law that explicitly prevents people from being fired, evicted, or refused service on account of their sexual orientation or gender identity. A proposal just to ban employment discrimination for LGBT Americans (ENDA) has been continuously stymied since 1994.

The Equality Act, which the White House announced it would support Tuesday, aims to provide a wider range of protections, and in the most direct way possible. The bill would insert language about gay and transgender people into legislation created by the 1964 Civil Rights Act — the historic measure that banned many forms of discrimination by race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

Does it make sense to have over here in one box, if you will, gender and race and ethnicity, and then put in a separate box LGBT issues?

--Sen Jeff Merkley (D-OR)

In actual practice the language of the law bans discrimination by sex. In 1989 the Supreme Court ruled that this meant that employers cannot discriminate against women for not acting feminine enough. Legal scholars say this creates a precedent against sex-stereotyping and that this can be extended to transgender people if we are discriminated against because we do not behave in accordance with the sex we were assigned at birth.

The Federal government has recently been riding that train. The EEOC has used the analysis to police employment discrimination cases. Former Attorney General Eric Holder announced last December that the DoJ officially agreed with the opinion. And in the last few years the Department of Education has been applying the analysis along with Title IX to protect transgender children in schools.

The EEOC claimed in July that sexual orientation itself should be protected under the sex-discrimination provisions in the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but so far, courts have been more skeptical of this argument. Judges point out that Congress probably did not expect the 1964 Civil Rights Act to be used to protect transgender or gay people. Its persistent decision not to enact the Employee Non-Discrimination Act is further evidence that today’s Congress is not prepared to affirm LGBT rights against discrimination.

The Equality Act has virtually no chance of becoming law anytime soon.