By Daniel Wiessner
Jan 22 (Reuters) – The U.S. agency that enforces laws prohibiting workplace discrimination on Thursday rescinded legal guidance that had strengthened protections against unlawful harassment for LGBTQ workers and women who have abortions.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission voted 2-1 to repeal the 2024 guidance, which had incorporated major court rulings and laws passed in the roughly 25 years since the agency last updated its guidance.
The five-member EEOC can make rules and issue guidance explaining how federal laws that protect workers from discrimination based on characteristics such as race, sex, religion and disability should be applied. A separate arm of the agency, led by the general counsel, vets discrimination complaints filed by workers and can broker settlements and bring lawsuits against employers accused of violating those laws.
EEOC guidance is not legally binding, but lays out a blueprint for how the commission will enforce anti-discrimination laws and is often cited by judges deciding novel legal issues.
Since President Donald Trump took office last year, his appointees at the EEOC have stopped pursuing most cases involving transgender workers and have launched probes into workplace diversity policies and alleged antisemitism on college campuses.
The repeal of the 2024 guidance was expected and comes less than three months after the U.S. Senate confirmed Trump nominee Brittany Panuccio to the commission, restoring a quorum of three members and giving Republicans a 2-1 majority.
The commission in the 2024 guidance had adopted a broad view of the type of conduct that amounts to unlawful workplace harassment, saying it included discriminating against employees because they have abortions or use contraception and refusing to use transgender workers’ preferred names and pronouns.
EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas, a Trump appointee, ahead of Thursday’s vote said the EEOC had overstepped its authority by issuing guidance that imposed new obligations on employers rather than interpreting existing law.
But critics of the move said it could discourage employers from preventing harassment and leave workers without recourse when they face it.
“This action is likely to increase the amount of harassment that occurs in workplaces across the country,” a dozen former EEOC and U.S. Department of Labor officials said in a joint statement before the vote. Most of the officials were appointed by Democratic presidents.
The 2024 guidance covered an array of topics, including a landmark 2020 Supreme Court ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County that said workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is a form of unlawful sex discrimination. The commission had said that while Bostock involved a gay worker’s termination and not harassment claims, the Supreme Court’s reasoning in the decision extended to cases alleging harassment of LGBTQ workers.
A federal judge in Texas last year had blocked that portion of the guidance, saying that finding was novel and was beyond the scope of the EEOC’s powers in issuing guidance. Two other judges separately barred the agency from enforcing the guidance against religious organizations that sued.
(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Andrea Ricci )
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