Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in a May 20 memo to state and local civil rights agencies said it will no longer fund joint investigations of discrimination claims that involve transgender employees as well as those involving disparate-impact allegations, various news outlets reported.
- A spokesperson for the New York State Division of Human Rights confirmed in an email to HR Dive that the agency received the memo, which said EEOC would no longer accept or make payments for investigations involving gender identity-based discrimination. The spokesperson said NYSDHR “will continue to accept and investigate complaints involving gender identity and expression within our jurisdiction.”
- Officials for the Maryland Civil Rights Commission and the New York City Commission on Human Rights separately confirmed the existence of the memo to HR Dive. EEOC declined to comment.
Dive Insight:
EEOC has set about a multistep effort to abandon enforcement of workplace anti-discrimination laws with respect to transgender employees under Acting Chair Andrea Lucas. While prior moves focused on changes to the agency’s own litigation and regulatory strategies, the latest move affects the agency’s external work with civil rights officials nationwide.
The commission contracts with state and local fair employment practices agencies to process more than 40,000 discrimination charges each year via worksharing agreements, according to its website. EEOC reimburses state and local agencies to initiate, investigate and resolve such charges, and the agreements permit charging parties to dually file with EEOC and applicable state and local agencies.
For example, EEOC’s contract with NYSDHR estimates that the state-led agency will lead approximately 2,000 cases under the joint partnership during the current federal fiscal year, according to NYSDHR. NYSDHR added that it receives an estimated $2.2 million per year from EEOC, about 5% of its $39.8 million annual budget.
Lucas, elevated to her role by President Donald Trump in January, previously stated her intent to lead EEOC in “rolling back the Biden administration’s gender identity agenda” in line with Trump’s executive order eliminating all mentions of transgender people from federal policy.
To that end, EEOC initially halted processing of sexual orientation- and gender identity-based discrimination claims and later abandoned harassment lawsuits filed on behalf of transgender workers. Advocacy groups have since intervened in some of those cases.
EEOC’s May 20 memo also addressed disparate-impact liability, which describes cases in which neutral policies or practices have a disproportionate, adverse impact on a protected class of people. Trump issued an executive order in April directing federal agencies to eliminate disparate-impact liability enforcement on the basis that it “not only undermines our national values, but also runs contrary to equal protection under the law and, therefore, violates our Constitution.”
Trump’s order was immediately criticized as illegal — including by an EEOC administrative judge who spoke to HR Dive — and a coalition of former U.S. Department of Labor and EEOC officials cautioned employers to ignore the order to avoid potentially violating federal civil rights laws.
