Quick Hits

• EEOC Acting Chair Andrea R. Lucas rolled back much of the EEOC’s guidance on gender identity, leaving in place certain documents that were issued with majority approval of the five-member Commission.
• In line with President Trump’s recent executive order on gender, the EEOC’s policy shift prioritizes biological definitions of “sex” in compliance and enforcement actions, removes gender identity–related resources, and ends the use of non-binary gender markers and honorifics in EEOC processes.

The EEOC’s January 28, 2025 announcement outlined a shift in sexual harassment and sex-based discrimination compliance and enforcement policy under Acting Chair Lucas, whom President Trump tapped for her new role on January 21, 2025.

The EEOC is now moving away from what is being referred to as “gender ideology,” aligning with President Trump’s EO 14168, titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” which the president signed on January 20, 2025, Inauguration Day. That EO directed federal agencies to “enforce laws governing sex-based rights, protections, opportunities, and accommodations to protect men and women as biologically distinct sexes.”

The EEOC confirmed it is removing materials on such concepts from its internal and external websites and references from other public documents, including webpages, statements, social media, forms, and training.

The announcement came a day after news broke that President Trump had removed Democratic Commissioners Charlotte A. Burrows and Jocelyn Samuels from the EEOC and discharged EEOC General Counsel Karla Gilbride.

Removing Gender Identity

To implement EO 14168, Acting Chair Lucas has:

• made defending biological and binary definitions of sex and related rights an agency priority for compliance, investigations, and litigation;
• removed the agency’s “pronoun app” for network profiles, which had enabled EEOC employees to identify and display their pronouns in both internal and external communications;
• removed the “X” gender marker for filing a discrimination charge and the prefix “Mx.” as an option for filing discrimination charges and related forms;
• initiated a review of the EEOC’s “Know Your Rights” poster, which was last revised in June 2023 and lists “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as bases for unlawful discrimination;
• removed information “promoting gender ideology” from the EEOC’s internal and external websites and media platforms; and
• added banners to publicly accessible documents explaining why they “cannot be immediately removed or revised” and have “not yet brought into compliance.”

The EEOC noted that certain documents, despite being subject to the EO 14168, could not be removed or modified unilaterally since they had been approved by a majority of the Commission. Currently, the EEOC lacks a quorum to act following the removals of Commissioners Burrows and Samuels, and it will continue to lack a quorum until new Commissioners are confirmed. Those documents include the EEOC’s:

• “Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace,” which was issued by a 3–2 vote in April 2024;
• “Strategic Plan 2022–2026,” which was issued by a 3–2 vote in August 2023; and
• “Strategic Enforcement Plan Fiscal Years 2024–2028, which was issued by a 3–2 vote in September 2023.

New Priorities

In recent years, the EEOC has issued several guidance documents interpreting the Supreme Court of the United States’ 2020 holding in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, in which the court held that protection against discrimination as a result of firing an employee on the basis of sex pursuant to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Acting Chair Lucas reiterated her opposition to the portions of the EEOC’s “Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace” to the extent that the guidance took the enforcement position that unlawful harassment under Title VII included the “denial of access to a bathroom or other sex-segregated facility consistent with [an] individual’s gender identity” and the “repeated and intentional use of a name or pronoun inconsistent with [an] individual’s known gender identity.”

Acting Chair Lucas said in her statement, “It is neither harassment nor discrimination for a business to draw distinctions between the sexes in providing single-sex bathrooms or other similar facilities which implicate these significant privacy and safety interests. And the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County does not demand otherwise: the Court explicitly stated that it did ‘not purport to address bathrooms, locker rooms, or anything else of the kind.’”

Next Steps

The EEOC’s recent policy shift prioritizes biological definitions of sex in compliance and enforcement actions, removing resources related to gender identity and ending the use of non-binary gender markers. The change contrasts with the previous administration’s stance, particularly following the Bostock decision.

Moreover, while Acting Chair Lucas is unable to rescind guidance previously approved by the majority of the five-member Commission, President Trump’s recent removal of two commissioners (with new commissioners due to be nominated and confirmed) may ultimately provide the votes needed to rescind all the EEOC’s guidance regarding gender identity. Without the removals, the Democrats would have retained a majority on the Commission through the end of Commissioner Samuels’s term in July 2026.