President Obama will today sign two executive orders to prevent federal contractors from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. There will be no exemption from the new regulations for religious organisations, despite calls from religious organisations and prominent faith leaders for one to be granted.

According to The Atlantic, the new executive order essentially imposes on contractors the provisions of the proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which passed the Senate but hasn’t been taken up by the House. That piece of legislation, however, did have a religious exemption.

White House Officials said that Obama plans to amend two executive orders. The first, signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965, prohibits federal contractors from discriminating based on race, religion, gender or nationality in hiring. Obama plans to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of protections, and order the Labor Department to carry out the order.

President George W. Bush had amended Johnson’s order in 2002 to allow religious groups to hire and fire based upon religious identity. Churches also are able to hire ministers as they see fit. The senior administration officials said Obama will not change those exemptions, but will not add any additional ones.

Obama chose to ignore the request of a number of faith leaders who wrote a letter asking for a religious exemption to be granted.

“Often, in American history–and, indeed, in partnership with your Administration–government and religious organizations have worked together to better serve the nation.An executive order that does not include a religious exemption will significantly and substantively hamper the work of some religious organizations that are best equipped to serve in common purpose with the federal government. In a concrete way, religious organizations will lose financial funding that allows them to serve others in the national interest due to their organizational identity. When the capacity of religious organizations is limited, the common good suffers”, the letter read.

The letter was organized by Michael Wear, who worked in the Obama White House and directed faith outreach for the president’s 2012 campaign. Signers include two members of Catholics for Obama and three former members of the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

“This is not an antagonistic letter by any means,” Wear told The Atlantic. But in the wake of Hobby Lobby, he said, “the administration does have a decision to make whether they want to recalibrate their approach to some of these issues.”