Fighting for EEOC workplace protections

Read our comment to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission asking them to enforce anti-discrimination protections for everyone, of every gender identity and sexual orientation.

On November 17th, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency tasked with enforcing Title VII’s protections against discrimination in the workplace, released a compliance manual that is supposed to help employers and government agencies follow Title VII and create workplaces free from discrimination. 

You may remember Title VII from Gender Justice’s court chats this summer, when the Supreme Court made a historic ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County. They ruled that Title VII’s protections against sex discrimination included LGB and trans people.

The decision is clear: it is illegal and unconstitutional to discriminate against someone because they identify as trans or LGB. 

So this new manual from the agency that enforces these laws should have clear guidance on how to comply with this new decision, right?

Wrong. 

This new manual from the federal government uses skewed legal arguments and broad misrepresentations of existing laws and regulations to suggest that employers could use religious exemptions to supersede Title VII, and that protections against sex discrimination are especially vulnerable to challenges under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It’s supposed to be a manual that clearly outlines how not to discriminate against your employees, but instead it grasps at legal straws to suggest how employers could use religious exemptions to excuse discrimination against employees, especially on the basis of sex. 

Gender Justice submitted a comment to the EEOC pointing out the ridiculousness of these arguments, making clear that employers cannot discriminate against their employees because of their gender or sexual orientation. The plain language of Title VII, and relevant Supreme Court decisions to date are on our side on this. 

We’re grateful to our community partners at Jewish Community Action, OutFront Minnesota, and JustUs Health who have signed onto the comment with us.

We won’t stop fighting to make sure everyone has safe, equitable workplaces free from gender-based harassment and discrimination. Thank you for making our work possible.

In solidarity,

Christy Hall, Senior Staff Attorney