WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal agency charged with enforcing workplace anti-discrimination laws voted Thursday to rescind its guidance on how to prevent workplace harassment, marking another major shift in U.S. civil rights enforcement under President Donald Trump’s second administration.
The new Republican majority at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission voted to repeal the 190-page document, which was intended as a resource for complying with Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, including how to protect transgender workers. Chairman Andrea Lucas and new commissioner Brittany Panuccio cited Trump’s executive order last year, in which he established that there are two immutable genders, male and female, as one of the reasons for rescinding the document.
Lucas emphasized at the start of Thursday’s meeting that the committee’s decision to withdraw the guidance “will not leave a void where employers are free to harass where they see fit, leaving behind a range of victims,” citing examples of several recent resolved harassment cases. Panuccio said private sector resources on anti-harassment laws will fill any gaps.
But critics argue that without guidance from the EEOC, all workers will now be more vulnerable to harassment. Kalpana Kotagal, the only Democrat on the committee, likened it to “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.” She voted against repealing it.
“At the height of the #MeToo movement, millions of people bravely came forward to share their stories, exposing harassment as an abuse of power,” Kotagal said. “The EEOC responded to the situation by promulgating the guidance it repeals today, which works to make workplaces safer for everyone.”
In fiscal year 2024, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received more than 35,000 harassment complaints.
The agency updated its guidance on workplace harassment in April 2024 for the first time in 25 years under President Joe Biden, following a 2020 Supreme Court ruling protecting lesbian, gay and transgender people from employment discrimination. Lucas voted against the guidance at the time, citing her objections to language that warned employers not to intentionally misgender transgender employees or deny them access to bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity.
“It is neither harassment nor discrimination when businesses differentiate between genders when providing single-sex bathrooms or other similar facilities, as these important privacy and security interests are at stake,” Lucas wrote in a 2024 statement opposing the guidance.
The agency under Lucas has been aggressive in cutting protections for transgender workers, dropping lawsuits on their behalf and demanding greater scrutiny of gender identity-related complaints it receives.
Worker groups strongly oppose the elimination of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s harassment guidelines. More than 80 organizations, led by the National Women’s Law Center, signed a letter urging Lucas to keep it.
Dozens of protesters gathered outside the EEOC building Thursday morning before the meeting, holding signs demanding “Free the EEOC” and waving flags emblazoned with the blue-and-yellow Equality logo of LGBTQ+ rights group Human Rights Campaign.
“The fact that they took such deep worker-centered guidance and threw it all away is just a slap in the face,” said protester Kate Miceli, who formerly worked in the Labor Department’s Bureau of Women’s Affairs.
A group of 12 former EEOC and Labor Department officials said withdrawing the entire document would leave “employers without a clear blueprint for creating and maintaining a harassment-free workplace and complying with anti-discrimination laws.” The group, EEO Leaders, also criticized the chairman in a Jan. 20 statement for waiving the notice and comment period, depriving the public of an opportunity to comment on the decision.
During the multi-year process of developing the 2024 guidance, the agency received more than 38,000 comments and public input. ________
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