EEOC rejects transgender Army worker’s bid to use women’s bathroom

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The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled Thursday that federal agencies may bar transgender employees from using bathrooms aligned with their gender identity, dismissing an appeal from a transgender woman who worked for the U.S. Army. In the 2-1 decision, the EEOC found the Army’s refusal to allow her to use facilities aligned with her gender identity did not violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination on the basis of sex, race, religion and national identity.

The case involved a civilian IT specialist assigned to the Army at Fort Riley, Kansas, according to the EEOC’s decision described by the Associated Press. The EEOC said the worker identified as a woman in the summer of 2025 and informed her managers of her gender identity when she asked to use bathrooms and locker rooms aligned with her gender identity. The Army declined her request, and her complaint was dismissed after she filed with the Army’s civil rights office.

After that dismissal, the worker appealed to the EEOC in its quasi-judicial capacity for federal employees whose complaints have been rejected by their agencies’ civil rights offices. The EEOC decided against her, citing President Donald Trump’s executive order directing the federal government to recognize only two immutable sexes, male and female. The decision therefore treated the employee’s request as inconsistent with the agency’s interpretation of what Title VII’s reference to “sex” covers.

EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas, in a statement supporting the decision, said the commission’s reasoning was “consistent with the plain meaning of ‘sex’ as understood by Congress at the time Title VII was enacted.” Lucas added that, under the commission’s approach, “similarly situated employees must be treated equally,” and she said, “Biology is not bigotry.”

In the written explanation of the ruling, the EEOC argued that interpreting Title VII to allow “trans-identifying” employees into bathrooms aligned with their gender identity would amount to eliminating single-sex facilities. The EEOC also said the worker’s request would require “bodily and other private functions in the presence of the opposite-sex,” and it framed that change as creating risks for women’s privacy expectations in such spaces.

Kotagal, the EEOC’s sole Democratic commissioner, dissented in the 2-1 vote, according to the AP report. In her statement explaining the dissent, Kotagal said the decision rests on “the false premise that transgender workers are not worthy of the agency’s protection from discrimination and harassment,” and she said the opinion “suggests that transgender people do not exist.” LGBTQ advocates and Kotagal’s supporters criticized the majority decision for what they said was an erasure of transgender people, while conservative advocates praised it as aligning with congressional authority rather than prior EEOC approaches.

The EEOC’s new finding retreated from what the AP described as the agency’s landmark finding about an earlier transgender Army employee, in which the EEOC had found discrimination tied to refusal to use preferred pronouns and to allow bathroom access based on gender identity. In Thursday’s decision, the EEOC concluded that the Army’s action did not violate Title VII’s sex-discrimination prohibition, while separately relying on the Trump executive order and extensive reasoning that included dictionary references and the commission’s view that the employee’s sex was male “from the moment of his conception.”

The EEOC’s approach also echoed Lucas’s longstanding position, as characterized by the AP, that allowing transgender employees to use bathrooms and locker rooms aligned with their gender identity would endanger women and violate their expectations for privacy. Lucas’s dissenting counterpart, Kotagal, tied the disagreement to broader legal interpretations, including a landmark 2020 Supreme Court ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, which Kotagal said reinforced that Title VII protects transgender workers from discrimination.

The Associated Press report said the EEOC decision does not automatically bind courts and does not set a precedent that U.S. courts must follow. The EEOC said the ruling applies to all federal agencies, and in the federal-sector system it issues decisions; for private employers, the EEOC investigates complaints and can decide whether to bring lawsuits, but does not issue the same kind of decision.

Dan Lennington, deputy counsel at the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, told AP that private employers should still take note of the EEOC’s direction because it signals how the EEOC may act in future cases. Lennington said his group represents a worker who filed a charge before the EEOC alleging religious discrimination after he was fired for asking not to use pronouns preferred by transgender colleagues.

The worker can seek further review, the AP report said, by filing a request for reconsideration with the EEOC within 30 days, or by bringing a new case in federal district court within 90 days, according to the agency’s instructions. Kotagal also said the EEOC was “rushing” its decision while a federal district court case addressing similar questions was pending as a class action filed by federal employees.

The Defense Department referred questions to the Department of Justice and the Army, and neither immediately replied to requests for comment, the AP report said. The EEOC decision also drew responses from advocacy groups and members of Congress, with some saying it leaves transgender workers exposed to hostile work environments with limited recourse, while others praised it as restoring the “plain meaning” approach to statutory language.