Loretta Lynch spoke with Buzzfeed's Chris Gender on Friday on a range of issues, including transgender protections.

Lynch’s Justice Department is one of the key agencies advancing that Obama administration position — first adopted by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — that sex discrimination bans for the workplace and schools should be read to include a ban on anti-transgender discrimination, including allowing people to use restrooms that correspond with their gender identity.

The Justice Department decided under Attorney General Eric Holder that Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination covered gender identity, and Lynch’s Justice Department filed a brief before a federal appeals court supporting a student’s claim regarding the education argument. Lynch said the department is “very gratified” that the court recently affirmed the department’s position.

To me, this is really an issue of equality and fundamental fairness and what kind of a society do we want to be. We decided over 200 years ago that we wanted to be an inclusive society, and we wanted to guarantee equal rights for all. For that to mean something, we have to be careful, we have to be vigilant, so that when people, for whatever reason, are either [made to] feel like they’re on the outside — a particular group — or are placed on the outside, that that doesn’t happen. And transgender issues are no different, to me, in that regard.

--Lynch

Lynch said she believes that one of the goals of the Justice Department must be to protect the vulnerable: elderly, children, human trafficking victims...

Our transgender family members and friends are also incredibly vulnerable to discrimination, in terms of the laws that we see, but also to abuse.

--Lynch

[T]his to me is all a part of the whole: If we’re going to have the view that we’re going to protect everyone in this society equally, we have to mean it.

--Lynch

I don’t know what’s going to happen in the cases that we’re talking about, for example, in the Title VII field. But I think, for me, when you look at the direction of the law, it always moves toward equality. It is slow and painful. Many times it is difficult. We don’t get there overnight.

--Lynch

On the new laws governing bathroom access:

I think it’s a symbol of the fact that a lot of people do find change difficult. They find new ideas and change hard and they will often have a reaction to it that isn’t the one that we hope that they would have that isn’t the choice of fairness and inclusion. It’s one based on misunderstanding. That happens in human history. It’s my hope that we can move beyond that and that we can look at, as we protect the most vulnerable members of our society, the elderly, children, human trafficking victims that we focus on the fact that transgender individuals are often victimized. They’re often discriminated against. If we’re going to move as a society towards a fair and more inclusive country, we have to protect their rights as well.

--Lynch