EEOC sued over its treatment of transgender bias charges

Dive Brief:

• An LGBTQ+ advocacy organization sued the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Acting Chair Andrea Lucas on Tuesday, alleging they unlawfully refused to enforce federal workplace protections for transgender workers. 
• The complaint, filed by FreeState Justice, a Maryland legal services nonprofit organization serving the state’s LGBTQ+ population, calls for declaratory and injunctive relief.
• The plaintiff alleged that EEOC, under Lucas’ leadership, “abdicated” its core duty to protect workers from discrimination by denying transgender workers access to its charge-investigation process. “In derogation of its statutory and constitutional obligations, the EEOC has foreclosed transgender workers from the full set of Title VII-mandated charge-investigation and other enforcement protections that all other charging parties enjoy,” according to the complaint.

Dive Insight:

Since taking the helm of EEOC earlier this year, Lucas has said the agency will focus on “rolling back the Biden administration’s gender identity agenda.” Critics, however, have pointed to EEOC’s mandate to enforce, among other statutes, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — a law the U.S. Supreme Court held prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

“Instead of serving its critical role to prevent discrimination in the workplace, the EEOC, under Andrea Lucas’ leadership, is actually promoting discrimination,” Gaylynn Burroughs, vice president for education and workplace justice at the National Women’s Law Center, said in a press release. NWLC and Democracy Forward filed the lawsuit on behalf of FreeState Justice, according to the announcement.

“Transgender workers deserve to be protected against harassment, and the EEOC is obligated to do so under law. 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,” Burroughs said. 

EEOC referred HR Dive to the U.S. Department of Justice, which declined to comment. 

So far, implementing the Trump administration’s agenda has meant moving to drop nearly every pending lawsuit from the past year that alleged discrimination against transgender workers and pulling funding from joint investigations with state and local agencies on discrimination claims that involve transgender employees, among other actions. 

EEOC’s “sweeping nonenforcement policy” of discrimination claims made by transgender workers “is a stark contrast to the long-standing practice of the EEOC,” according to NWLC’s news release. 

Tuesday’s lawsuit alleged EEOC’s actions violate not only Title VII but also the Fifth Amendment’s Equal Protection guarantee and the Administrative Procedure Act.

“For over 60 years, the EEOC’s mandate has been to protect workers from discrimination, not to pick and choose who is deemed worthy of protection based on political interference,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said in a statement.