The DOJ Abandons EEOC's' Gender Identity' Guidance ...
While EEOC Acting Chair Andrea R. Lucas criticizes the agency for elevating notions of 'gender identity' over the risk to female workers of sexual harassment and abuse.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued the first update to its workplace harassment guidance in more than 20 years last April, declaring that gender identity harassment equals sex discrimination.
A coalition of 18 state attorneys general from GOP-led states, led by Tennessee, immediately filed a lawsuit in federal court to block the guidance.
The guidance declares it is workplace discrimination to intentionally and repeatedly misgender trans workers, to use their prior “dead names,” and to refuse transgender employees access to the private spaces (i.e. bathroom) of the gender with which they identify.
On Monday, the guidance appeared to be on life support.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) effectively announced it will no longer defend the EEOC guidance when it requested the cancellation of oral arguments in the case that were scheduled to take place on Monday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee.
In its request to cancel Monday’s hearing, the DOJ cited a Jan. 20 executive order by newly-elected GOP President Donald J. Trump directing the federal government to henceforth recognize only two sexes.
“Defendants respectfully suggest that these developments warrant vacating the oral argument,” said the DOJ.
The EEOC, which is charged with enforcing the nation’s civil rights laws, is responsible for investigating alleged discrimination in the public sector, but it must refer cases to DOJ’s Civil Rights Division for actual litigation. If the DOJ refuses to litigate, the case cannot go forward.
The guidance still exists on paper, however, because U.S. District Judge Charles Atchley denied a request by the defendants to issue a preliminary injunction to halt enforcement of the guidance. It is unclear what impact, if any, the mere existence of the guidance will have. It seems likely that a separate lawsuit filed by Texas, which also challenges the guidance, will be dropped by the DOJ.
The EEOC declined to respond to an email request for comment.
Meanwhile, Trump has named Andrea R. Lucas, a member of the EEOC since 2020, as acting chair of the EEOC.
Lucas complained that women’s sex-based rights in the workplace are “under attack - and from the EEOC, the very federal agency charged with protecting women from sexual harassment and sex-based discrimination at work.”
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