The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission voted to rescind its 2024 workplace harassment guidance on Thursday, an action described by the agency’s Republican majority as another shift in how the administration of President Donald Trump is guiding civil-rights enforcement.
The commission’s newly-established Republican majority rescinded the guidance designed as a compliance resource for Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, including how to protect transgender workers. EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas and recently-installed Commissioner Brittany Panuccio pointed to Trump’s executive order issued last year—described as decreeing that there are two immutable sexes, male and female—as one reason for revoking the document.
At the start of Thursday’s meeting, Lucas said the decision would not leave employers with unchecked ability to harass workers. She said the rescission “will not leave a void where employers are free to harass wherever they see fit, leaving a trail of victims in their wake,” and she cited several recent examples of settled harassment cases.
Panuccio said private sector resources on anti-harassment law would fill any gaps created by the rescission. Critics disputed that characterization, arguing that removing the EEOC guidance would leave workers more vulnerable to harassment.
Kalpana Kotagal, the lone Democrat on the commission, voted against keeping the guidance in place and compared the move to “throwing out the baby with the bathwater.” Kotagal said the guidance was promulgated at the height of the #MeToo movement to make workplaces safer for everyone, and she cited the EEOC’s role in responding as people came forward with harassment accounts.
The EEOC reported it received more than 35,000 harassment complaints in fiscal year 2024. The agency’s current workplace harassment guidance had been updated in April 2024 for the first time in 25 years, after a 2020 Supreme Court ruling held that gay, lesbian and transgender people are protected from employment discrimination.
In a statement dissenting to the April 2024 guidance, Lucas said it was neither harassment nor discrimination for businesses to provide single-sex bathrooms based on sex and privacy and safety interests. In that dissent, Lucas wrote: “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.”
Lucas also opposed language in the 2024 guidance that warned employers against deliberately misgendering transgender employees or refusing them access to bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity. The AP reported that under Lucas’s leadership, the EEOC has been paring back protections for transgender workers, including dropping lawsuits on their behalf and requiring heightened scrutiny for incoming complaints related to gender identity.
Outside the EEOC building on Thursday morning, protesters clustered with signs and flags calling for the guidance to be kept. Some held signs demanding “hands off the EEOC,” and others waved flags with the blue-and-yellow equality logo associated with the Human Rights Campaign.
Kate Miceli, a protester who previously worked at the Women’s Bureau at the Department of Labor, said discarding the guidance was “such a slap in the face.” Workers’ groups also urged the commission to preserve the document, with the National Women’s Law Center leading a letter signed by more than 80 organizations.
A separate group of former EEOC and Department of Labor officials, called EEO Leaders, said withdrawing the entire document deprives “employers of a clear blueprint for creating and maintaining a harassment-free workplace and complying with anti-discrimination laws.” In its Jan. 20 statement, the group also criticized the chair for not conducting a notice-and-comment process that would have allowed the public to weigh in on the decision.
AP reported the EEOC received more than 38,000 comments and public opinions during the yearslong process of developing the 2024 guidance. The rescission vote, announced during Thursday’s meeting, closes out the guidance that the commission had updated in April 2024 following the Supreme Court’s 2020 discrimination ruling.