EEOC seeks to drop transgender discrimination cases, citing Trump’s executive order

Signaling a major shift in civil rights enforcement, the federal agency that enforces workplace anti-discrimination laws has moved to dismiss six of its own cases on behalf of workers alleging gender identity discrimination, arguing that the cases now conflict with President Trump’s recent executive order, court documents say. The New York lawsuit alleged that Boxwood Hotels LLC fired a transgender housekeeper who complained that a supervisor repeatedly misgendered them and made anti-transgender statements, referring to the housekeeper as a “transformer” and “it.” Another suit alleged that Wendy’s franchisee Starboard Group Inc. subjected three transgender employees to pervasive sexual harassment at a Wendy’s restaurant in Carbondale, Ill., claiming a supervisor demanded to know if one employee had a penis. And in Santa Clara, the EEOC charged that a Lush Handmade Cosmetics store manager sexually harassed three gender nonconforming employees with “offensive physical and verbal sexual conduct.” Former EEOC general counsel and professor and Co-Dean Emeritus at Rutgers Law School David Lopez, who served in the agency for more than 20 years, on Friday said in his experience, the EEOC has never dismissed cases based on substance rather than merit — until now. “It’s like a complete abdication of responsibility.” The EEOC’s requests to dismiss the cases come just weeks after Trump dismissed two Democratic commissioners of the five-member EEOC before their terms expired, an unprecedented decision that removed what would have been a major obstacle to his administration efforts to upend interpretation of the nation’s civil rights laws. But the information appears to have been removed and the link now leads to a blank page with the message: “The requested page could not be found.” Jocelyn Samuels, one of the Democratic EEOC commissioners who was fired last month, said via email that Trump’s executive order and the EEOC’s response to it “is truly regrettable.” “The Administration’s efforts to erase trans people are deeply harmful to a vulnerable community and inconsistent with governing law,” she said.