The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the primary federal agency that enforces laws against employment discrimination, has updated federal workplace guidelines to protect transgender workers from transphobic harassment like misgendering or denial of bathroom access. The new guidelines — the first issued from the EEOC in 25 years — define such harassment as a form of sex-based discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a federal law against workplace discrimination.
The new guidelines — which also forbid harassment against people who are pregnant, have just birthed children, are breast/chestfeeding, or have had an abortion — go into effect immediately. While they aren’t legally binding, they still present a legal framework of workplace standards for employers, employees, courts, and agencies that handle harassment claims, the EEOC wrote.
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A Monday statement announcing the new guidelines states cites the 2020 Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, a case that defined anti-LGBTQ+ workplace discrimination as a form of sex-based harassment.
“Sex-based harassment includes harassment based on sexual orientation or gender identity, including how that identity is expressed,” the guidelines state. The guidelines’ definition of this harassment includes insulting remarks about others, physical assault, forced outing, misgendering, and denying access to sex-segregated facilities like bathrooms and locker rooms.
The EEOC developed the new guidelines after input from the public, civil rights and workers’ rights organizations, unions, employer and human resources representatives, scholars, and attorneys representing plaintiffs and defendants in employment discrimination matters, the EEOC wrote.
“As we commemorate this year’s 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the guidance will help raise awareness about the serious problem of harassment in employment and the law’s protections for those who experience it,” EEOC Chair Charlotte A. Burrows wrote in the aforementioned statement.
“The guidance incorporates public input from stakeholders across the country, is aligned with our Strategic Enforcement Plan (SEP), and will help ensure that individuals understand their workplace rights and responsibilities.”
The SEP is a plan to enforce the new guidelines in ways that promote compliance across a large organization, geographic region, or industry. The SEP says the EEOC and its associated partners will especially focus on instances of workplace discrimination involving new legal developments (like the use of AI technology), workers who may be unaware of their legal rights, and any practices that impede the government from fully enforcing Title VII. Additionally, the SEP will also prioritize ensuring equal pay among genders, ending systemic harassment, and preserving worker access to the legal system.
Unsurprisingly, conservatives and religious groups have already criticized the new guidelines. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) said in a Monday statement that the EEOC had “detached itself from reality” to appease a “mob” of “leftist activists who want Americans to conform to their warped political ideology.”
“From the mandated use of pronouns to a denial of biological facts, the EEOC seems more interested in appeasing the mob than undertaking commonsense policymaking to protect workers,” Foxx wrote. “File this away as another item in the long list of failures spearheaded by this agency.”
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