Rally for LGBTQ rights outside Supreme Court in 2019 as Justices heard arguments in the Bostock cases on job discrimination.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency charged with enforcing laws against employment discrimination across the United States, is dropping cases it previously filed on behalf of trans and nonbinary Americans.
“Biology is not bigotry,” said EEOC Acting Chairperson Andrea Lucas in a statement announcing the department’s priorities. “Biological sex is real, and it matters.”
Insights for the LGBTQ+ community
Subscribe to our briefing for insights into how politics impacts the LGBTQ+ community and more.
“Defending the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights” will be a priority under her leadership at EEOC, she said.
Lucas added later that the agency would continue accepting all discrimination charges filed by workers, but complaints that “implicate” Trump’s order would be kicked up for “review” — where and by whom was unclear.
LGBTQ+ rights advocates said dropping the cases was a clear violation of the EEOC’s mandate.
“The Supreme Court’s landmark Bostock v. Clayton County decision unequivocally established that discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is discrimination based on sex under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” said Noreen Farrell, Executive Director of Equal Rights Advocates. “This isn’t a matter of policy preference or political ideology, it’s settled law that the EEOC has a legal duty to enforce.”
Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA), Chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, said Lucas and acting general counsel Andrew Rogers are “willfully ignoring the duties of their offices” and called on them to resign.
“Their disregard for the law’s protections for transgender and nonbinary workers and unwillingness to defend the independence of the agency they are charged with serving should disqualify them from serving the American people,” Takano said.
The EEOC was created to defend against job discrimination following passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The commission received more than 3,000 complaints alleging discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in 2023, according to the agency’s website, up more than 36% from the previous year. A link for information on discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is no longer available on the site.
Two weeks ago, Trump dismissed two Democratic commissioners of the five-member EEOC before their terms expired.
David Lopez, a former EEOC general counsel and professor at Rutgers Law School, said the commission has never previously dismissed cases based on substance rather than merit.
For the country’s anti-discrimination agency “to discriminate against a group, and say: ‘We’re not going to enforce the law on their behalf’ itself is discrimination, in my view,” Lopez told the Associated Press. “It’s like a complete abdication of responsibility.”
Six cases brought by the agency during President Biden’s term have been dropped.
One case in Alabama charged a Hilton Hotels hospitality group with discriminating against an employee who identifies as gay, nonbinary and male by firing him hours after co-owners learned of his gender identity. The former employee showed up to a meeting scheduled outside of working hours wearing capri cut joggers, pink painted nails, and box braids.
In a New York case, a hotel group allegedly fired a transgender housekeeper who complained that her supervisor had allegedly repeatedly misgendered her and made anti-transgender statements, referring to the housekeeper as a “transformer” and “it.”
At a case involving a hog farm in southern Illinois, a man allegedly exposed his genitals to a transgender co-worker and fondled her breasts.
In a California case, a Lush handmade cosmetics store manager is alleged to have sexually harassed three gender-non-conforming employees with “offensive physical and verbal sexual conduct.”
In one Illinois case, a complaint alleged that a Wendy’s franchise owner allegedly subjected three transgender employees to repeated sexual harassment, with one supervisor demanding to know which trans employee had a penis.
In another Illinois case, a transgender Reggio’s Pizza cashier at Chicago O’Hare international airport was allegedly “outed” by her manager, and harassed by co-workers who called her racist, homophobic slurs. She was fired when she complained.
In her mission-defining statement for the EEOC, Lucas said, “It is not harassment to acknowledge these truths – or to use language like pronouns that flow from these realities, even repeatedly.”
Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.
