Dive Brief:
- Continuing the trend by federal agencies toward greater protections for transgender employees, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has released “A Guide to Restroom Access for Transgender Workers."
- Under current federal law, employers are required to provide all employees reasonable access to restroom facilities. And an employer may not impose unreasonable restrictions on an employee’s use of restroom facilities, according to a blog post by Denise Visconti, of the Littler law firm.
- It is OSHA’s intent that “employees be able to use toilet facilities promptly” when the need arises to avoid the potential adverse health effects that can occur when restroom access is not immediately available. Hence, employees cannot be limited to using facilities that are an unreasonable distance from their workspace or be required to wait an unreasonably long time to use available facilities.
Dive Insight:
The Littler blog post notes that in its guide, OSHA provides “model practices” for employers to follow when providing access to restrooms by transgender employees. One of these is based on gender identity, meaning a person who identifies as male should be permitted to use the men’s restroom, and a person who identifies as female should be permitted to use the women’s restroom.
Another is employees should be permitted to determine for themselves the most appropriate (and safest) restroom to use. As such, employers should refrain from requiring or deciding which restroom should be used by a particular employee.
There are several more models and it can get complex, so any HR leader who has to manage this situation would best make sure to download the guide to the company website and contact OSHA with questions.
