Two recent lawsuits raise serious red flags about how the agency is functioning, or, more accurately, is not functioning.
First: a complaint filed by Democracy Forward Foundation and the National Women's Law Center accuses the EEOC of refusing to enforce protections for transgender workers—including dismissing complaints and halting payments to state and local agencies investigating gender-identity discrimination.
Second: In an administrative decision, a transgender former EEOC employee was awarded unemployment benefits after resigning over ongoing gender-identity-based harassment—an outcome that highlights how deeply flawed the agency's own internal practices have become.
The controlling authority from the Supreme Court of the United States in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) held that Title VII’s prohibition on discrimination "because of … sex" necessarily encompasses discrimination based on gender identity. In other words: Congress wrote "sex" discrimination; the Supreme Court interpreted it to include gender identity; and the EEOC's job is to enforce accordingly.
Yet the agency appears to be saying: "Yeah, that's the law… but we're not doing that."
For employers who rely on the EEOC to set norms, investigate promptly, and issue consistent guidance, this is deeply unsettling. the EEOC is deferring its obligation for political reasons. As a result, employers face greater risk, workers face less protection, and the law becomes less predictable.
This political stunt is not a license for employers to ignore compliance. The law against transgender discrimination remains the law, no matter what the EEOC says. Just because the agency isn't going to enforce it doesn't mean you should ignore it in your business — and it certainly doesn't mean you should go out of your way to discriminate. In fact, I'd argue the opposite: employers need to step in and do what the EEOC won't.