Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg on Wednesday endorsed passage of a federal bill that seeks to prohibit LGBT discrimination.

Democrats on Wednesday held a news conference to announce introduction of the Equality Act.

First introduced in 2015, the Equality Act seeks to prohibit anti-LGBT discrimination in seven key areas, including credit, education, employment, federal funding, housing, jury service and public accommodations, by effectively expanding the Civil Rights Act, originally approved in 1964.

The legislation is sponsored by Rhode Island Representative David Cicilline in the House and Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley in the Senate.

“We are reintroducing the Equality Act in order to fix this,” Cicilline said. “Enacting and protecting civil rights laws is one of the most important things we can do in this building.”

The legislation has more than 239 co-sponsors in the House, including two Republicans, and 47 co-sponsors in the Senate, including one Republican, Senator Susan Collins of Maine.

Buttigieg, the openly gay mayor of South Bend, Indiana, endorsed the legislation in a statement.

“Fifty years ago, courageous gay and transgender people stood up at Stonewall for the right to be recognized as equal Americans. It's time to finally implement a federal Equality Act that extends civil rights protections to all Americans, regardless of their gender identity and sexual orientation. This bill is commonsense, bipartisan, and will ensure that LGBTQ+ Americans in the thirty states like Indiana where discrimination is effectively legal will have the same rights and protections as the rest of America. In this country, you should not be discriminated against because of who you are or who you love,” he said.