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Signaling a major shift in civil rights enforcement, the federal agency that enforces workplace anti-discrimination laws has moved to dismiss six of its own cases on behalf of workers alleging gender identity discrimination, arguing that the cases now conflict with President Donald Trump’s recent executive order, court documents say. The requests by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) mark a major departure from its prior interpretation of civil rights law, and a stark contrast to a decade ago when the agency issued a landmark finding that a transgender civilian employee of the U.S. Army had been discriminated against because her employer refused to use her preferred pronouns or allow her to use bathrooms based on her gender identity. Just last year, the EEOC updated its guidance to specify that deliberately using the wrong pronouns for an employee, or refusing them access to bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity, constituted a form of harassment. That followed a 2020 Supreme Court ruling that gay, lesbian and transgender people are protected from employment discrimination. Nearly all workplace discrimination charges must pass through the EEOC at least initially and the agencys decision to drop at least six of the cases raises serious questions about whether its protections will continue to extend to transgender and gender nonconforming people going forward. The EEOC is seeking to dismiss three cases in Illinois as well as one in Alabama, New York and California. In each instance, the original complaints allege discrimination against transgender or gender nonconforming workers. The agency cites Trumps Jan. 20 executive order declaring that the government would recognize only two immutable sexes male and female as the reason for why it no longer intends to pursue the cases. The Alabama case charged that Harmony Hospitality LLC discriminated against an employee who identifies as a gay nonbinary male by firing him hours after co-owners learned of his gender identity. The New York lawsuit alleged that Boxwood Hotels LLC fired a transgender housekeeper who complained that a supervisor repeatedly misgendered them and made anti-transgender statements, referring to the housekeeper as a transformer and it. Another suit alleged that Wendys franchisee Starboard Group, Inc. subjected three transgender employees to pervasive sexual harassment at a Wendys restaurant in Carbondale, Illinois, claiming a supervisor demanded to know if one employee had a penis. In another Illinois case, a transgender Reggios Pizza cashier at Chicago OHare International Airport was outed by her manager, called a racist, homophobic slur by coworkers, and fired when she complained. In southern Illinois, at a hog farm called Sis-Bro, Inc., a coworker allegedly exposed his genitals to a transgender employee and touched her breasts. And in Santa Clara, California, the EEOC charged that a Lush Handmade Cosmetics store manager sexually harassed three gender nonconforming employees with offensive physical and verbal sexual conduct.” Former EEOC General Counsel and Professor and Co-Dean Emeritus at Rutgers Law School David Lopez, who served in the agency for more than 20 years, on Friday said in his experience, the EEOC has never dismissed cases based on substance rather than merit until now. For the country’s anti-discrimination agency to discriminate against a group, and say, Were not going to enforce the law on their behalf itself is discrimination, in my view,” Lopez said. “Its like a complete abdication of responsibility. The EEOC’s requests to dismiss the cases come just weeks after Trump dismissed two Democratic commissioners of the five-member EEOC before their terms expired, an unprecedented decision that removed what would have been a major obstacle to his administration efforts to upend interpretation of the nation’s civil rights laws. Had the commissioners been allowed to carry out their terms, the EEOC would have had a Democratic majority well into Trump’s term. The administration also fired Karla Gilbride as the EEOC’s general counsel, replacing her with Andrew Rogers as acting counsel. Shortly after their dismissals, acting EEOC chair Andrea Lucas, a Republican, signaled her intent to put the agency’s resources behind enforcing Trump’s executive order on gender. She announced in a statement that one of her priorities would be defending the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights.” Later, she ordered that the EEOC would continue accepting any and all discrimination charges filed by workers, although complaints that implicate Trump’s order should be elevated to headquarters for review. Biology is not bigotry. Biological sex is real, and it matters, Lucas said in her statement. Sex is binary (male and female) and immutable. It is not harassment to acknowledge these truths or to use language like pronouns that flow from these realities, even repeatedly. She removed the agencys pronoun app, which allowed employees to display their pronouns in their Microsoft 365 profiles, among other changes. The EEOC in fiscal year 2023 received more than 3,000 charges alleging discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, the most since the agency started tracking these charges in FY 2013, and up more than 36% from the previous year, according to the agencys website, which also provides a link for more information on discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. But the information appears to have been removed and the link now leads to a blank page with the message: The requested page could not be found. Jocelyn Samuels, one of the Democratic EEOC commissioners who was fired last month, said via email that Trump’s executive order and the EEOC’s response to it is truly regrettable. “The Administrations efforts to erase trans people are deeply harmful to a vulnerable community and inconsistent with governing law,” she said. Sarah Warbelow, vice president of legal at LGBTQ+ rights group Human Rights Campaign, added in an emailed statement: This is the inevitable outcome when the EEOC is weaponized to greenlight discrimination against American workers. Instead of standing up for the rights of everyone to a workplace free from discrimination, including harassment and bias, the Trump administration is making it abundantly clear they will not protect working people.” By Claire Savage and Alexandra Olson, Associated Press The Associated Presss women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
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Last week, the Trump administration continued its federal firing spree. After recommendations from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the administration reportedly fired more than 300 of National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) workers, then quickly rehired most of them, according to the AP. The chain of events prompted immediate concerns over national security.Pantex Plant, the primary nuclear weapons facility in the United States, in Carson County, Texas, was the target of 30% of the cuts. However, by Friday evening, Teresa Robbins, the acting administrator of NNSA, reportedly issued a memo rescinding the firings. All but 28 of the employees who were dismissed were told they had their jobs back. This letter serves as formal notification that the termination decision issued to you on February 13, 2025, has been rescinded, effective immediately, said the memo, which was obtained by the Associated Press.Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety with the Union of Concerned Scientists, told the AP the firings are disruptive to the organization as a whole, as well as the security of the country. I think the signal to U.S. adversaries is pretty clear: throw a monkey wrench in the whole national security apparatus and cause disarray, he said. That can only benefit the adversaries of this country.The NNSA firings were only a fraction of the federal cuts made last week. On Friday, 9,500 federal workers were let go, in addition to the 75,000 who have already taken Trump’s buyout deal. But some say, DOGE is only cutting organizations it isn’t politically aligned withtargeting public health and the environment.For example, the U.S. Forest Service fired around 3,400 recent hires, the National Park Service laid off about 1,000 employees, according to Reuters, as well as nearly half of the probationary workers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and others at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). They are not going to go into agencies that are doing things they like. They are going into agencies they disagree with,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Republican director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), told Reuters. There were also job cuts reported at the FDA and the FAA.There have been at least 73 lawsuits filed over Trump’s executive orders since he took office. And on Monday, a national holiday, Reuters reported that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has called an emergency hearing to address DOGE’s recent firings. Chutkan will hear arguments from 14 states in order to decide whether to issue a temporary restraining order against DOGE.Last week, the courts blocked a number of DOGE’s efforts, temporarily barring the organization from accessing sensitive Treasury Department information and payment systems and disallowing the government from blocking federal funding due to a health agency providing gender-affirming services to minors.Over the weekend, Trump pushed back on efforts to block the administration’s efforts to overhaul government spending in a post on social media. “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” the president wrote.The sentiment mimics a quote often attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte. In the 1970 film Waterloo, Napoleon states, he did not “usurp the crown” but found it in the gutter” and “picked it up with my sword.” The quote continues, “and it was the people . . . who put it on my head. He who saves a nation violates no law.
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Reports that Elon Musks Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is seeking access to a guarded Internal Revenue Service (IRS) system has raised alarm bells in Washington and across the nation. Lawmakers and taxpayers say theyre worried about the potential privacy implications of a department run by the worlds richest man having access to extremely sensitive personal and financial information. While no IRS access has yet been granted or even officially requested, DOGE is already looking into the recesses of several government divisions and expected to broadly widen its scope in the coming weeks. And now a DOGE team member is reportedly close to gaining access to taxpayer data. The Washington Post reports that the IRS is under pressure from the White House to give DOGE officials access to its systems and databases, including one that would allow them to access IRS accounts and bank information. This comes in the midst of the 2025 tax season, when Americans are in the process of filing their taxes and awaiting refunds. Why is DOGE looking at the IRS? The official primary reason being given, per a memorandum obtained by the Post, is for modernization of IRS systems and engineering assistance. The DOGE software engineer who will be working there is reportedly set to spend 120 days at the tax service. One idea the department has floated in the past was launching a mobile app letting people file their taxes. Few, if any, are disputing that the IRS systems are in need of an overhaul. Many were built in the 1960s. Its the access to Integrated Data Retrieval System (IDRS) thats especially unusual. (Even security clearance does not give individuals access to it.) Will Elon Musk and his team have access to my tax records? Musk, personally, wont have access, assuming integration follows the outline in the memorandum. Instead, a single DOGE staffer, software engineer Gavin Kliger, will reportedly work at the IRS and have access to IDRS, which reports say could give him and the Musk-run department access to social security numbers, bank information, and more. What safeguards are being put into place to protect my privacy? Kliger would be required to maintain the confidentiality of the tax return information he sees and is required to destroy it when he has finished his work at the IRS. Hes also required to not share any of that information with people who do not have access to IDRS. Not everyone follows that agreement, of course. An IRS contractor named Charles Littlejohn is currently serving a five-year felony sentence for leaking the tax information of Trump, Musk, and others in 2021. Could DOGE seeking access to the IRS system affect how long it takes to get my refund? Thats uncertain. While the IRS has not extended its estimated timeline for refunds (which stands at up to 21 days for e-filed returns and 4 weeks or more for returns sent by mail), any changes to the IRS in the middle of tax season could cause a disruption. DOGEs plan to update systems isnt the only potentially disrupting action the Trump administration has taken with the IRS. Thousands of probationary workers (recent hires or someone who has moved or been promoted into a new position) are expected to be laid off, and it’s unclear if that will slow down the processing of returns. (IRS workers were not given the option to accept a recent buyout offer extended to federal workers.) At least one Democratic Senator is warning refund delays could happen, though. NEW: My office is hearing that DOGE is now at the IRS. That means Musk's henchmen are in a position to dig through a trove of data about every taxpayer in America. And if your refund is delayed, they could very well be the reason.— Ron Wyden (@RonWyden) February 13, 2025 Does this impact my chances of getting audited? This, too, is unclear. The Biden Administration invested heavily in the IRS, with plans to hire tens of thousands of IRS workers to help with both customer service and enforcement. That investment came with the caveat that the funding, from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, would not be used to increase audits of people making $400,000 or less per year. The IRS has made limited progress with complying with that, however. Its unclear if a reduction at the IRS could squeeze resources at the tax agency and reduce its ability to audit corporations and individuals. Is it legal for DOGE to look through IRS records? The courts will have to ultimately decide that. Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.), a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, says DOGEs actions are illegal and a blatant power grab. And Attorneys General from 14 states, on Thursday, filed a lawsuit in federal court to challenge DOGEs plans, saying Musk and the Departments actions can only be taken by someone who has been approved by the Senate.
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