President Obama will sign a landmark executive order Monday that prohibits federal contractors from discriminating against employees based on sexual orientation or gender identity. 

The order will protect gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees from discrimination, which White House officials said fulfills a promise to the Democratic electorate, according to The New York Times. 

The new directive will not exempt religious groups, to the disappointment of religious organizations. However, religious groups will still enjoy limited exemption because of a 2002 directive signed by President George W. Bush. 

The order will protect federal employees, who are already protected based on their sexual orientation, from discrimination because of gender identity.  

Gay rights groups stepped up their petition to get President Obama to sign the order after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby last month, allowing organizations with strong religious views to be exempted from providing female employees contraception insurance. Gay groups feared that the case could also be detrimental for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered individuals. 

Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement Friday that the president's order will have a "very real and immediate impact on the lives of millions of L.G.B.T people across the country."

"These actions from the president have the potential to be a keystone in the arch of his administration's progress, and they send a powerful message to future administrations and to Congress that anti-L.G.B.T. discrimination must not be tolerated," Griffin told The New York Times.  

Religious groups sought the exemption from the directive to ensure that they would not lose federal money if they refuse to adhere to the new guidelines. 

Galen Carey, the vice president of  government relations for the National Association of Evangelicals, said the exemption of the religious organizations would have promoted "social harmony as our nation is working through these issues, on which there's a lot of disagreement."

Obama is signing the bill as a unilateral directive due to legislation being halted by Republican opposition in the House. His executive orders have come under fire from Republicans with Speaker of the House John Boehner seeking to file a lawsuit against Obama because of his unilateral actions. 

Obama said last month that he would sign the directive because the push for a national anti-bias law in Congress for almost all employers, called the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, has reached an impasse. 

Obama said he will add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of protections that apply to federal contractors to a directive approved by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965. He will also add gender identity as a protected category to a directive that applies to federal employees that was signed by President Richard Nixon in 1969. It was amended in the 1990s by President Bill Clinton to include sexual orientation. 

However, some gay rights groups were initially displeased that the Obama administration accepted the exemption of religious groups in anti-bias legislation that passed in the Senate last fall. Others saw the exemption as a way to secure Republican votes for the bill. 

As of now, religious groups that have contracts with the federal government have a limited exemption from the anti-bias rules that are already in place based on the 2002 executive order signed by President Bush. The directive allows religious groups to apply religious beliefs to employment decisions in a limited capacity. 

However, some groups believe that Obama should go further to allow religious groups to keep government financing even if they deny employment for individuals because they are gay or transgendered. 

Yet, some religious groups, such as the Interfaith Alliance, want Obama to oppose the limited exemption and do not agree with some groups using religious freedom to violate the rights of other people. 

Heather Cronk, the director of GetEqual, a gay rights group, told The New York Times that they are ecstatic that Obama heeded the calls of gay rights organizations to not include a religious exclusion in the bill. 

"We're so proud today of the decision made by the Obama administration to resist the calls by a small number of right-wing conservatives to insert religious exemptions into civil rights protections," she said.