Federal agency sued for failing to enforce employment protections for transgender workers

The Hill

3 days ago

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency responsible for enforcing laws against workplace discrimination, has refused since January to fully enforce employment protections for transgender workers, two left-leaning legal organizations argue in a new lawsuit.
A complaint filed Tuesday by Democracy Forward and the National Women's Law Center (NWLC) on behalf of FreeState Justice, a Maryland nonprofit, alleges the EEOC and its acting chair, Andrea Lucas, are violating federal civil rights law, the Constitution and Supreme Court precedent by declining to process certain discrimination complaints raised by transgender workers.
The EEOC first halted the charge-investigation process for charges tied to sexual orientation or gender identity in January, the lawsuit alleges, following an executive order from President Trump declaring that the U.S. recognizes only two unchangeable sexes, male and female. In April, the agency directed staff to classify charges of gender identity discrimination as meritless and put them on hold, the Associated Press reported at the time.
In a July email to staff that was first reported by the Washington Post, Thomas Colclough, director of the EEOC's field operations, said the agency would only process cases that 'fall squarely' under the Supreme Court's 2020 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, which found that firing transgender workers because of their gender identity violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The agency would process standalone hiring, dismissal and promotion charges brought by transgender workers, Colclough wrote, but would not investigate other claims, including workplace harassment, that are tied to gender identity.
Tuesday's lawsuit, filed in Maryland district court, refers to the agency's new policy as the 'Trans Exclusion Policy' and argues that it 'deprives transgender workers of the full set of charge-investigation and other enforcement protections that the EEOC provides to other workers.'
'Consider, for example, the transgender worker who files a charge of discrimination with the EEOC after a years-long barrage of on-the-job anti-trans insults and slurs, threats of sexual and lethal violence, and physical attacks,' the lawsuit says. 'Before the Trans Exclusion Policy, a charge alleging such facts would have led the EEOC to process and investigate the charge, which in turn might have yielded a finding by the EEOC that there was reasonable cause to believe the charging party had been subject to unlawful treatment.'
'Under the Trans Exclusion Policy, the EEOC would not investigate, issue a cause finding, attempt to settle, or take any other step to process the charge,' the lawsuit continues. 'All because the charging party is transgender.'
An EEOC spokesperson directed The Hill's request for comment to the Justice Department, which did not immediately return an email seeking comment on the complaint.
Gaylynn Burroughs, vice president for education and workplace justice at NWLC, said in a statement that the EEOC under Lucas's leadership is 'promoting discrimination.'
'Transgender workers deserve to be protected against harassment, and the EEOC is obligated to do so under law,' Burroughs said. 'But the Trump administration seems hellbent on bullying transgender people in every possible way and ensuring that they are pushed out of all forms of public life, including their workplaces, so we're taking the administration to court.'
Lucas, who has served as an EEOC commissioner since 2020 and was named the agency's acting chair in January, had previously listed 'defending the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights' as one of her top priorities. During a Senate confirmation hearing in June, Lucas defended her decision to dismiss several of the EEOC's own cases filed on behalf of transgender workers, arguing the cases conflict with Trump's 'two sexes' order.
'Biology is not bigotry. Biological sex is real, and it matters,' Lucas said in January. 'Sex is binary (male and female) and immutable. It is not harassment to acknowledge these truths—or to use language like pronouns that flow from these realities, even repeatedly.'
Lucas has also voiced opposition to the EEOC's anti-harassment guidelines, which state that gender identity discrimination is prohibited by Title VII and 'sex-based harassment includes harassment based on sexual orientation or gender identity, including how that identity is expressed.'
Lucas, who voted against the policy when the EEOC brought it to a vote last year, cannot unilaterally remove or modify it.