Dylan Orr’s Seattle Work Connects Labor Rights, Disability Policy and HIV Advocacy

Dylan Orr’s public-sector career has connected workplace protections, disability employment policy and LGBTQ-related federal initiatives across Seattle, King County and Washington, D.C.

Orr, born in 1979, is the director of Environmental Health Services for King County. Before taking that position, he led the City of Seattle’s Office of Labor Standards from 2015 through 2018. The office was responsible for enforcing several major workplace protections, including Seattle’s minimum wage law, its paid sick and safe time requirements, its wage theft law and its fair chance employment law.

That portfolio placed Orr at the center of policies affecting workers’ pay, time away from work, hiring opportunities and protection from unlawful wage practices. For Seattle’s LGBTQ community, those issues can overlap with broader questions of economic security and access to employment, although the available record does not identify Orr’s personal sexual orientation or gender identity.

Before joining Seattle city government, Orr served as chief of staff to Kathy Martinez, an assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy. In that role, he contributed to federal regulations and policies concerning employment for people with disabilities, including rules connected to Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

His federal work also included coordination with the White House Office of National AIDS Policy. As the Labor Department’s representative, Orr worked on implementation of the President’s National HIV/AIDS Strategy. The extract also credits him with significant contributions to multiple federal policies and regulations concerning LGBT people.

That combination of disability and LGBTQ policy work is notable because it reflects the way federal employment policy can intersect with health, civil rights and workplace access. In Seattle, Orr later applied that policy experience to enforcement of local labor standards rather than to federal rulemaking.

Orr was recruited to the federal administration by Paul Steven Miller, a University of Washington School of Law professor and former commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The available biographical information identifies Miller as a key connection in Orr’s move into national disability and employment policy.

Orr’s career therefore offers a Seattle-relevant view of how local enforcement and federal policymaking can be linked. His roles have included implementing city labor laws, contributing to disability employment regulations and participating in work related to the National HIV/AIDS Strategy and federal LGBT policies. Together, those positions place him within a broader public-policy history involving employment rights, disability access, HIV advocacy and LGBTQ equality.

Source and reuse information This backgrounder adapts factual material from “Dylan Orr” on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_Orr The adapted text is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. This story has not been independently reviewed or fact-checked.

Further links listed by the Wikipedia page (not independently checked): - https://www.victoryfund.org/our-story/gay-politics-blog/transgender-day-remembrance-note-humanity/ - https://web.archive.org/web/20090216144639/http://students.washington.edu/pila/2007-grantees.html - https://web.archive.org/web/20140324185539/http://www.transequality.org/Year10Awards/index.html - https://web.archive.org/web/20111216220639/http://www.gaypolitics.com/2011/12/03/transgender-leaders-talk-trans-101-in-houston/ - https://web.archive.org/web/20160616145647/https://victoryfund.org/our-story/gay-politics-blog/transgender-day-remembrance-note-humanity - https://web.archive.org/web/20160304092249/http://www.prrac.org/full_text.php?text_id=1324&item_id=13053&newsletter_id=113&header=Race+/+Racism&kc=1 Image rights Photograph description: friends and co-workers to welcome Dylan Orr as he is sworn in as the new Director of Office of Labor Standards <a href=" http://www.seattle.gov/laborstandards " rel="nofollow">www.seattle.gov/laborstandards</a> Creator: Seattle.gov from Seattle. License: CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0). Original image page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ADSC_3552_(31999508492).jpg. The image was resized for display; no other changes were made.