02-05-2025
Andrea Lucas, the new acting EEOC chair, identified actions that she has taken to “return” the agency to the “mission” of “protecting women from sex-based discrimination” in the workplace. To achieve this “mission,” she will prioritize compliance, investigation, and litigation that defends the “biological and binary reality of sex and related rights, including women’s rights to single-sex spaces at work.”
On a granular level, Lucas has removed agency employees’ ability to indicate their pronouns in communications and use “X” to indicate non-binary gender. She removed information about “gender ideology” from the EEOC’s website. Bostock v. Clayton County remains the law of the land, expressly holding that discrimination based on sex includes discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Nevertheless, the EEOC told employees to stop processing LGBTQ+ discrimination claims.
Lucas has more support from within the agency because the president removed Democratic commissioners Charlotte A. Burrows and Jocelyn Samuels. He also fired EEOC general counsel Karla Gillbride. The changes take away the Democratic voting majority and will likely allow for more policy changes. The EEOC was intended to be an independent, bipartisan agency with commissioners serving staggered five-year terms. Title VII mandates that “not more than three [commissioners] shall be members of the same political party.” Historically, removing commissioners required cause, like neglect of duty or bad acts. The current administration made similar moves at the NLRB, removing board member Gwynne Wilcox and firing general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo. It is anticipated that these removals before the end of the respective EEOC terms will end up in lengthy litigation.