The Federal Agency responsible for protecting the civil rights of workers is classifying all new cases of discrimination related to gender identity such as their lowest priority, which essentially puts them indefinitely, according to two employees of the agency.
The US Employment Opportunities Equal Commission held a meeting on Wednesday clarifying how would the complaints of gender identity discrimination workers in view of the executive order of January 20 of President Donald Trump declared that the Government would do so. Recognize only two “immutable” sexes – Man and woman.
The personnel who handle the incoming charges, or the intakes, went to encode them as “C”, the lowest categorization in the EEOC system that is generally reserved for charges without merit, according to the employees of the agency who attended the Microsoft teams for admission supervisors, district directors and support personnel that was directed by the US National Information Coordinator. The employees asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to reveal the details of the meeting.
A EEOC spokesman declined to comment on the meeting, saying that “according to federal law, we cannot discuss research practices.”
The decision is the last step of the EEOC to go back to defend the rights of transgender and non -binary workers in an important change in the application of civil rights under the Trump administration. In February, the EEOC moved to Drop seven of your own pending demands alleging discrimination against transgender and non -binary people.
The interim president of the EEOC, Andrea Lucas, Republican, said that one of her priorities will be to implement Trump’s executive order on gender and “defend the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights.” He had previously ordered that any charge of discrimination of workers who “imply” Trump’s executive order on gender rise to the headquarters for review.
This last decision to bury complaints related to gender identity leaves transgender and non -binary people who experience discrimination at work with a limited resource. American workers must present complaints of discrimination through the EOOC in most cases before they can look for other legal paths.
Giving the cases related to gender identity the lowest priority essentially defaults that they have no merit, said Chai Feldblum, who was commissioner of the EEOC of 2010-2019.
“If they say they are taking him to a central location to give them due consideration, at least they have the facade of doing something,” Feldblum said about Lucas’s previous directive on cases of gender identity. “If they are sweeping them as” C “charges, they are not doing their job.”
The EEOC has said that it will still issue “right to sue” notices in cases related to gender identity on request, which means that workers can decide to follow a lawsuit on their own. The agency will also honor mediation requests, according to employees who attended Wednesday’s meeting. But if mediation fails, the EEOC will not take more measures on the case, employees said.
The new EEOC approach to Discrimination related to gender identity has raised a debate on whether the agency is acting in violation of the 2020 ruling of the Supreme Court in Bosock v. Clayton CountyA historical case that established that Title VII of the Civil Rights Law prohibits discrimination in the workplace based on gender identity.
Civil Rights activists have accused the EOC of illegally challenging the Supreme Court and abdicating their duty to enforce laws against discrimination by abandoning demands related to gender identity. Lucas has previously said to the AP that the EEOC has a duty to comply with Trump’s executive orders, but has not directly approached criticism that the management of gender identity cases of the agency is in tension with the Supreme Court.
The EEOC in fiscal year 2024 received more than 3,000 positions that allege discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, and more than 3,000 in 2023, according to the agency’s website.
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Associated Press’s business reporter Alexandra Olson contributed to this report.
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