20 Facts About Chai Feldblum

Chai Rachel Feldblum was born on April 1959 and is an American legal scholar and activist for disability and LGBT rights.

Chai Feldblum was nominated to the position by president Barack Obama in 2009.

Chai Feldblum was born in New York City to Meyer Simcha and Esther Feldblum.

Meyer Simcha Feldblum was born in Lithuania and survived the Holocaust by living in the forests of Poland.

Chai Feldblum came to the United States following WWII, where he earned his ordination and Ph.

Esther Chai Feldblum was the daughter of Rabbi Ephraim Eliezer Yolles, a Hasidic Rebbe of Philadelphia.

Chai Feldblum grew up in Washington Heights in New York City.

Chai Feldblum attended the Yeshiva University High School for Girls in Queens, New York before majoring in Ancient Studies and Religion at Barnard College in the class of 1979.

Chai Feldblum received her JD from Harvard Law School in 1985.

Chai Feldblum joined the faculty of Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, DC in 1991, teaching classes on "legislative lawyering," a phrase she coined to describe the work of the attorneys who craft or lobby for legislation.

Chai Feldblum founded and is the director of the university's Federal Legislation Clinic.

In 2003, Chai Feldblum became co-director of Georgetown's Workplace Flexibility 2010 project, a program developed to improve conditions for employers and employees.

Chai Feldblum worked on passage of the ADA Amendments Act of 2008, and has testified before Congress on numerous occasions.

In testimony before the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Chai Feldblum testified that claims that she believed in governmental endorsement of polygamy or polyamorous relationships were wrong, consistent with her own writings in which she had always restricted such endorsement to non-sexual domestic partners.

Chai Feldblum is openly lesbian and became the first openly LGBT person to serve on the EEOC.

In 2013, Chai Feldblum was nominated by President Obama to serve a second term on the EEOC, expiring on July 1,2018.

Chai Feldblum was nominated for a third term on the EEOC by President Donald Trump, but her nomination was blocked by Senator Mike Lee.

Chai Feldblum described the firm as "the place from which to help make that institutional change", of preventing harassment from happening in the workplace.

Chai Feldblum left the firm in March 2021, after helping to expand the firm's DEI and respectful workplace practice.

In November 2020, Chai Feldblum was named a volunteer member of the Joe Biden presidential transition Agency Review Team to support transition efforts related to the United States Department of Justice.