In one of its last acts of the current session, on December 22, 2010, the U.S. Senate confirmed the nominations of Jacqueline A. Berrien to be Chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; Chai R. Feldblum ( a long-time lesbian activist ) and Victoria A. Lipnic to be Commissioners; and P. David Lopez to be the General Counsel. All four were nominated to their positions by President Barack Obama and had been serving under recess appointments since April, 2010.
Jacqueline A. Berrien came to the Commission from the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund where she was the Associate Director-Counsel. She has spent her entire legal career in public service, focusing on constitutional and civil rights issues. A graduate of Oberlin College, she received her law degree from Harvard and clerked for O.W. Clemon, the first African-American U.S. District Court Judge in Birmingham, Ala. She will serve a term that expires on July 1, 2014.
