President Trump has named former Commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Andrea R. Lucas as Acting Chair of the EEOC, putting her at the top of the an agency charged with “enforcing federal laws that make it illegal to discriminate against a job applicant or an employee because of the person’s race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetic information.”
Lucas replaces outgoing Chair is Charlotte A. Burrows, a former Associate Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) who was appointed chair by Joe Biden. Burrows served as an EEOC Commissioner under Presidents Obama, Trump and Biden.
In April, as a Commissioner, Lucas voted to disapprove the EEOC’s new Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace, which replaced the agency’s guidance documents issued between 1987 and 1999.
The new harassment guidance is designed to protect “employees from harassment based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions; sexual orientation; and gender identity), national origin, disability, age (40 or older) or genetic information.”
Lucas wrote in a statement: “I voted to disapprove the final guidance, for reasons including the guidance’s assault on women’s sex-based privacy and safety rights at work, as well as on speech and belief rights.”
[According to the guidance, misgendering someone is considered “harassing conduct” when a member of the workplace engages in “repeated and intentional use of a name or pronoun inconsistent with the individual’s known gender identity.”]
Lucas added: “The Commission’s guidance turns anti-harassment principles completely upside down. Under the Commission’s pronouncement, a company denying biological males access to its women’s workplace bathroom, shower, locker or dressing room, or sleeping facilities no longer is exercising reasonable care to prevent harassment of female workers. To the contrary, taking this reasonable and necessary step to protect women now is deemed evidence of harassment against any biological male who self-identifies as having a female ‘gender identity.’”
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