The religious exemption in ENDA “would say that sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination are not actionable against those entities as defined in Title VII, he added.

“It would be setting up a two-tiered system saying that race, color, sex and national origin discrimination cannot be engaged in by one of these entities, but sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination can,” Nevins said.

In the statement, the groups warn the religious exemption “gives a stamp of legitimacy to LGBT discrimination that our civil rights laws have never given to discrimination based on an individual’s race, sex, national origin, age, or disability.”

For some time now, the ACLU has expressed concerns that the religious exemptions in legislation to ban LGBT job discrimination were too broad, but this is the first time they’ve laid down a marker on such concerns so early in the legislative process. It also is the first time they’ve been joined by several LGBT legal groups — Lambda Legal, National Center for Lesbian Rights and Transgender Law Center — in raising the concerns.