President Barack Obama is quietly preparing to release new guidelines that would bar workplace discrimination against transgender federal employees. The New York Times reports the administration will add transgender people – those who identify their gender differently from the sex indicated on their birth certificates – to a list of other groups protected by anti-discrimination laws. The new guidelines will appear in an updated federal handbook distributed within the next couple of months.

President Bill Clinton added sexual orientation in 1998 to the list of protected categories that already included “race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, handicapping condition, marital status or political affiliation.” By adding transgender persons to the do not harass list, Obama may be closing the last obvious loophole for federal workplace protection, until of course someone claims discrimination for being overweight, or aesthetically or vertically challenged.

Some say the new guidelines are not necessary. The Library of Congress, which is not part of the Executive Branch and would not be affected by the President’s directive, recently lost a discrimination case following the withdrawal of a job offer after learning the candidate was undergoing a sex change operation. Despite transgendered individuals not being a protected class, the Library was found to have violated the plaintiff’s civil rights and had to pay $500,000 in lost pay and damages. In essence, the federal government ended up paying for the sex change operation and a lifetime supply of makeup.

John Berry, Director of Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the administration’s highest-ranking openly gay official, told The New York Times that he thought it was important to specifically clarify that they were protected from discrimination.

“I know they [transgender individuals] are present in the federal workforce, and they deserve to be treated with respect and dignity,” Berry said.

Statistics from the Diagnostic and Statical Manual IV states that about one in 30,000 males and one in a 100,000 females have identified themselves as having very strong transgender feelings. However, the number of those who act on those feelings is less know, despite a statistic that 2-3% of men engage in cross-dressing at some point. If we apply these statistics to the federal workforce of 2.7 million and assume equal numbers of male and female employees, we can estimate there are about 45 male and 14 female transgender individuals in the federal workforce today. Of course, being as though the federal sphere offers greater protections for workers from discimination, these number likely skew 10-20 percent higher.

After campaigning on promises to be a strong advocate of equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals, Obama is now being criticized for not moving quickly enough. Many LGBT activists are frustrated that Obama has not acted to repeal the military’s "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" policy, or pushed for overturning the Defense of Marriage Act, and are disappointed that his earlier move to expand federal employee benefits to same-sex partners did not include health insurance.

At the same time, conservative groups have expressed their unhappiness with what they see as a strong pro-gay agenda. The evangelical group Focus on the Family released a statement that said the new policy was unnecessary and criticized it as “government affirmation” of behavior it has defined as “one of many sexual sins that is outside God’s created intent and desire for us.” However, it's unclear whether he was talking about transgender workers or Congress in general.