That's why the recent allegations against the agency itself are so concerning.
Marc Seawright, a transgender man and the EEOC's former Director of Information Governance and Strategy, alleges in his recently filed EEOC charge that the agency instructed him to scrub every mention of LGBTQ+ identities from its outreach materials. The agency created these materials to help employers understand their obligations under Title VII as defined by the Supreme Court in the Bostock case. According to Seawright, his expertise is now being "leveraged to perpetuate discrimination against people like me."
Seawright also alleges:
- He was excluded from leadership meetings because of his gender identity.
- He was forced to dismantle the EEOC's own "pronoun app," a tool he built to help employees respect each other's identities and one that other federal agencies had sought to replicate.
- He faced daily hostility under the agency's current leadership, which ultimately led him to resign, citing "significant distress, anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, anger, and sadness."
Seawright isn't alone. Other transgender federal employees describe being told they cannot use restrooms aligned with their gender, losing access to gender-affirming health coverage, and facing workplaces that feel intentionally inhospitable.
If these allegations are true, the irony is staggering. The EEOC—the very agency responsible for investigating and prosecuting workplace discrimination—is accused of engaging in the same unlawful conduct it is sworn to prevent.
For employers, this creates a serious credibility problem. How can the EEOC enforce anti-discrimination laws in the private sector if it is undermining those same principles in its own offices? How can HR professionals rely on EEOC guidance if key protections are being erased from its outreach materials?
The EEOC's power rests entirely on trust—trust from workers that their rights will be protected, and trust from employers that the agency is a fair and consistent enforcer of the law. These allegations cut to the heart of that trust.
As legal and HR professionals, we should be asking: If the EEOC cannot protect its own employees, how can we trust it to protect anyone else?