By Claire Savage, Associated Press
The federal agency responsible for protecting the civil rights of workers classified all new cases of discrimination linked to gender identity as its lowest priority, essentially putting them indefinite, according to two employees of the agency.
On Wednesday, the United States Commission for Equal Opportunities for Employment Taken a meeting, specifying how it would deal with new complaints from gender discrimination of identity, given the executive decree of January 20 of President Donald Trump declaring that the government would only recognize two “immutable” sexes – men and women.
The staff who manage incoming charges or contributions was responsible for coding them under the name of “C”, the lowest categorization of the EEOC system which is generally reserved for unnecessary charges, according to employees of the agency who attended the meeting of EEOC admission teams for admission supervisors, and EEOC support staff. The employees asked to stay anonymous because they were not allowed to reveal the details of the meeting.
An EEOC spokesperson refused to comment on the meeting, saying that “by federal law, we cannot discuss investigation practices”.
The decision is the last stage of the EEOC to withdraw from the defense of the rights of transgender and non -binary workers in a major change in the application of civil rights under the Trump administration. In February, the EEOC decided to drop seven of its own in progress, alleging discrimination against transgender and non -binary people.
The acting president of the EEOC, Andrea Lucas, a republican, said that one of her priorities will be the implementation of Trump’s executive decree on gender and “the defense of biological and binary reality of sex and related rights”. She had previously ordered that any accusation of discrimination of workers who “implies” Trump’s decree on sex was raised at the head office for examination.
This last decision to bury complaints related to gender identity leaves transgender and non -binary people suffering from discrimination at work with a limited appeal. American workers must file complaints of discrimination via EEOC in most cases before they can request other legal paths.
Giving cases linked to gender identity the lowest predetermined priority that they are without merit, said Chai Feldblum, who was an EEOC commissioner from 2010 to 2019.
“If they say they have brought it to a central location to give them a reasonable consideration, they at least have the facade of doing something,” said Feldblum about the previous Lucas directive on cases of gender identity. “If they sweep them through the door in the form of” C “, they do not do their job.”
The EEOC has declared that it will always make opinions “right to continue” in cases related to identity between the sexes on request, which means that workers can decide to continue a legal action by themselves. The agency will also honor mediation requests, according to employees who attended the meeting on Wednesday. But if mediation fails, the EEOC will no longer take action on the case, employees said.
The new approach of EEOC to discrimination linked to the identity between the sexes has raised a debate on the question of whether the agency acts in violation of the decision of the Supreme Court in 2020 in Bostock v. Clayton County, a historical case which established that title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination in the workplace based on the identity of the sexes.
Civil rights activists have accused the EEOC of illegally challenging the Supreme Court and the abdication of its duty to apply anti-discrimination laws by abandoning prosecution related to the identity of the sexes. Lucas previously declared to the AP that the EEOC had the duty to comply with the executive orders of Trump, but it did not directly address the criticisms that the management of the sexual identity agency was in tension with the Supreme Court.
The EEOC during the 2024 fiscal year received more than 3,000 accusations alleging discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, and more than 3,000 in 2023, according to the agency’s website.
Associated Press’s sales journalist Alexandra Olson contributed to this report.
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Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
