A Federal Judge of Texas canceled the directives of a government agency establishing protections against harassment in the workplace based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk of the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas On Thursday Determined That the Us Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Exceeded Its Statracy Authority When the Agency Issued Guidance to Employers Against Deliberaly Using the Wrong Pronouns for An Employee Bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity, and barring employed from wearing dress code-compliant clothing according to their gender identity because may may constitute forms of workplace harassment.
Title VII of the 1964 civil rights law Protects employees and candidates for discrimination in terms of employment according to race, color, religion, sex and national origin.
EEOC, which applies anti-discrimination laws in a workplace, Updated his advice On harassment in the workplace in April of last year under President Joe Biden for the first time in 25 years. He followed a 2020 Supreme Court to rule that homosexuals, lesbians and transgenders are protected discrimination in terms of employment.
Texas and the Heritage Foundation, the conservative thinking group behind 2025 projectIn August, disputed the directives which, according to the agency, serves as a tool for employers in order to assess compliance with anti-discrimination laws and is not legally restrictive. Kacsmaryk did not agree, writing that the guidelines creates “compulsory standards … from which the legal consequences will necessarily flow if an employer does not comply”.
The decision marks the Last blow to work protections For transgender workers after January 20 of President Donald Trump executive decree declaring that the government would recognize only two “immutable” sexes – men and women.
Kacsmaryk, a 2017 Trump candidate, invalidated all parties of the EEOC advice which define the “sex” to include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity”, as well as a whole section approaching the subject.
“Title VII does not require employers or courts to blind the biological differences between men and women,” he wrote in the advice.
The president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, congratulated the decision in an email declaration: “The Biden Eeoc tried to force companies – and the American people – to deny the basic biological truth. Today, thanks to the great state of Texas and the work of my heritage colleagues, said a federal judge: not so fast. ”
He added: “This decision is more than a legal victory. It is cultural. He says no – you do not have to abandon common sense to the altar of left ideology. You don’t have to claim that men are women.”
The Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton, also praised the victory against Biden’s “Police Police rule” in a Friday press release, saying: “The federal government is not allowed to force Texans to play with delusions or ignore biological reality in our workplaces.”
The National Women’s Law Center, which filed a memory of Amicus in November in support of the harassment guidelines, criticized the decision in a statement sent by email.
“The decision of the district court is an outrage and in contradiction with a contradiction with a precedent of the Supreme Court,” said Liz Theran, principal director of litigation for education and justice in the workplace at the NWLC. “EEOC harassment directives remind employers and workers to do something that shouldn’t cost anything: to refrain from degrading others on work according to their identity and what they like. This decision does not change the law, but it will make it more difficult for LGBTQIA + workers to apply their rights and experiences free from harassment. ”. “”
Kacsmaryk offered a narrower interpretation of Bostock c. Clayton County, the affair of the Historical Supreme Court which established discrimination protections for LGBTQ +workers, affirming in its decision that the Supreme Court “firmly refused to extend the definition of the ‘sex’ ‘beyond the organic binary”, and found that employers could not be firefighters to be gay or transgender.
Employment lawyer Jonathan Segal, partner of Duane Morris who advises companies on the best way to comply with anti-discrimination laws, stressed that legal minds can disagree on the scope of Bostock and that Kacsmaryk’s decision is only an interpretation.
“If you assume that a transgender employee has no right beyond not being dismissed for transgender status, you probably interpret his rights too closely under the federal and state law”, which would place employers in a risky position, “said Segal.
And whether in place explicit advice, employers must always address gender identity conflicts in the workplace, according to Tiffany Stacy, an Ogletree Deakins lawyer in San Antonio who defends employers against allegations of discrimination in the workplace.
“From the management point of view, employers should be ready to disseminate these situations,” said Stacy.
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.
The United States Ministry of Justice and the EEOC refused to comment on the outcome of the Texas affair.
The acting president of the EEOC, Andrea Lucas, appointed by Trump, voted against the harassment guidelines last year, but could not cancel or revise them after Trump dismissed two of the three Democrats CommissionersLeave the federal agency without the quorum necessary to make major political changes.
But earlier this month, Trump hit an American assistant in FloridaBrittany Panuccio, to fill one of the vacant posts. If Panuccio is confirmed by the Senate, the EEOC would take over a quorum and have a republican majority 2-1, allowing the path to fully pivot the agency to focus on Trump’s priorities.
“There is neither harassment nor discrimination for a company to make distinctions between the sexes by providing bathrooms with a single sex,” Lucas wrote in a statement expressing his dissent to this aspect of directives.
In her four -month term as an acting president, Lucas revised the interpretation by the Agency for Civil Rights Law, in particular abandon representative of transgender workers alleging that they have undergone discrimination and insistent sideline All new cases of discrimination in gender identity received by the agency.
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