The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the U.S. agency that enforces discrimination laws in the workplace, appears to be softening its hard stance against handling cases involving transgender people.
The change in policy comes after Andrea Lucas, the Donald Trump-appointed chair of the agency, earlier this year defended her decision before a Senate committee to drop a half dozen lawsuits on behalf of transgender workplace complaints in response to the President’s executive order that there were only two genders, male and female.
Word of the softer policy comes from an email obtained by the Associated Press (AP), which reported Wednesday:
The email was sent earlier this month to leaders of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission with the subject line “Hot Topics,” in which Thomas Colclough, director of the agency’s Office of Field Programs, announced that if new transgender worker complaints involve “hiring, discharge or promotion, you are clear to continue processing these charges.”
Those complaints, however, will be subjected to greater scrutiny and will require approval from Lucas, according to a Fox News report.
Following Trump’s executive order, the agency formally announced in January that it was “Restoring the EEOC’s role of protecting women in the workplace” and “rolling back the Biden administration’s gender identity agenda.”
A decade ago, that same agency had made a landmark ruling that a transgender civilian employee of the U.S. Army had faced discrimination when the employer refused to use the worker’s preferred pronouns or allow them to use bathrooms based on gender identity rather than their sex.
The EEOC does have to deal with a 2020 Supreme Court ruling, Bostock v. Clayton County, that sexual discrimination did include firing someone because they were transgender or because of their sexual orientation.
AP reported:
Colclough acknowledged in his July 1 email that the EEOC will consider transgender discrimination complaints that “fall squarely under” the Supreme Court’s ruling, such as cases involving hiring, firing and promotion. The email backtracked on an earlier policy, communicated verbally, that de-prioritized all transgender cases.
The change, however, was not enough to satisfy at least one former EEOC commissioner appointed by former President Barack Obama.
Chai Feldblum told the Associated Press regarding the new policy, “It is a slight improvement because it will allow certain claims of discrimination to proceed. But overall it does not fix a horrific and legally improper situation currently occurring at the EEOC.”
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