EEOC moves to drop discrimination cases involving transgender, gender non-conforming people: reports

According to the report, the cases involve:

• A gay nonbinary male in Alabama who was fired hours after his employer learned about his gender identity
• A transgender housekeeper in New York who alleged that a supervisor misgendered them and referred to them as a "transformer" and "it"
• Three transgender employees who alleged their employer in Illinois subjected them to sexual harassment
• A transgender cashier in Illinois complained that she was "outed" by her manager and that she received racist and homophobic slurs from her co-workers
• Three gender non-conforming employees were allegedly sexually harassed by their store manager with "offensive physical and verbal sexual conduct"

Trump's executive order

The EEOC, in its moves, cited Trump's executive order on January 20, where he declared that the US will only recognise two sexes: male and female.

"These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality," Trump said in the executive order. "'Sex' shall refer to an individual's immutable biological classification as either male or female. 'Sex' is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of 'gender identity.'"

According to Trump, gender identity reflects a "fully internal and subjective sense of self," and it diminishes sex as an identifiable or useful category.

"'Gender identity'… does not provide a meaningful basis for identification and cannot be recognised as a replacement for sex," Trump said in the order.

Acting EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas, in response to Trump's order, has implemented the following steps:

• Removed the agency's "pronoun app," a feature in employees’ Microsoft 365 profiles, which allowed an employee to opt to identify pronouns, content that then appeared alongside the employee's display name across all Microsoft 365 platforms, including Outlook and Teams
• Ended the use of the "X" gender marker during the intake process for filing a charge of discrimination
• Directed the modification of the charge of discrimination and related forms to remove "Mx." from the list of prefix options
• Commenced review of the content of the EEOC's "Know Your Rights" poster, which all covered employers are required by law to post in their workplaces
• Removed materials promoting gender ideology on the Commission's internal and external websites and documents, including webpages, statements, social media platforms, forms, training, and others

"Biology is not bigotry. Biological sex is real, and it matters," Lucas said in a statement in January. "Sex is binary (male and female) and immutable. It is not harassment to acknowledge these truths — or to use language like pronouns that flow from these realities, even repeatedly."

Departure from policies

The EEOC's stance is directly in contrast to its policies last year, where it declared as harassment the deliberate use of incorrect pronouns for an employee or refusing them access to bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity.

It is also a departure from its landmark ruling in 2015, where it found that a transgender civilian employee of the US Army faced discrimination after her employer refused to use her preferred pronouns or allowed her to use bathrooms aligned with her gender identity, CBS News reported.

David Lopez, former EEOC General Counsel and Professor and Co-Dean Emeritus at Rutgers Law School, said not enforcing the law on a group that was discriminated against is "a complete abdication of responsibility."

"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 CBS News.