EEOC Acting Chair, Proponent of EOs Reconfirmed as Commissioner

Employers might redouble their efforts to align with President Donald Trump’s executive orders (EOs), now that one of their biggest supporters, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission acting Chair Andrea Lucas, has been confirmed to a second term as a commissioner.  

“I look forward to continuing the historic progress this agency has made since the start of the second Trump administration under my leadership — from securing multiple settlements with some of the world’s largest law firms to disavow DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] and embrace merit-based hiring and other employment practices, to obtaining the largest EEOC settlement to date for victims of antisemitism on behalf of Jewish employees at Columbia University,” Lucas said.

She overcame opposition in the Senate from Democrats to secure her confirmation July 31. Trump will decide whether Lucas continues as EEOC chair.

“In just a few short months as acting chair, Andrea Lucas has warped the mission of the EEOC beyond recognition and weaponized the agency to green-light discrimination, roll back protections for people who are sexually assaulted at work, and intimidate anyone who challenges President Trump,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. in a July 31 statement.

For her part, Lucas said she is “committed to enacting the bold civil rights agenda laid forth by President Trump, ensuring equal justice under the law, and focusing on the restoration of equal opportunity, merit, and colorblind equality for all members of the American workforce.”

Lucas’ role is “critical to the interpretation, enforcement, and oversight of federal labor laws,” SHRM noted prior to her Senate confirmation hearing. Her confirmation will influence how the EEOC implements policies impacting employers and the workplace, SHRM added. On Jan. 24, SHRM wrote in support of the appointment of Lucas as the EEOC’s acting chair.

Lucas’ Priorities

Lucas was a Republican EEOC commissioner during Trump’s first term and announced her agenda at the outset of his second term.

“My priorities will include rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination; protecting American workers from anti-American national origin discrimination; defending the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights, including women’s rights to single-sex spaces at work; protecting workers from religious bias and harassment, including antisemitism; and remedying other areas of recent under-enforcement,” she said on Jan. 21 — the day after Trump’s inauguration.

Toolkit: Managing Equal Employment Opportunity

More recently, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s June ruling in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, which made it easier for members of majority groups, including heterosexual people, to bring anti-discrimination claims, Lucas said she welcomed the decision and promised the EEOC would address the concerns this case elevated.

“Under my leadership, the EEOC is committed to dismantling identity politics that have plagued our employment civil rights laws by dispelling the notion that only the ‘right sort of’ plaintiff is protected by Title VII [of the Civil Rights Act of 1964],” she said. “In the wake of Ames, there can be no more confusion.”

Related Article: EEOC to Dismantle Identity Politics

Other Actions

Under Lucas’ leadership, the EEOC has said it should rescind its “flawed” harassment guidance under the Biden administration.  

“Because of biological realities, each sex has its own, unique privacy interests, and women have additional safety interests, that warrant certain single-sex facilities at work and other spaces outside the home,” Lucas said in a Jan. 28 statement. “It is neither harassment nor discrimination for a business to draw distinctions between the sexes in providing single-sex bathrooms or other similar facilities which implicate these significant privacy and safety interests. And the Supreme Court’s [2020] decision in Bostock v. Clayton County does not demand otherwise: The court explicitly stated that it did ‘not purport to address bathrooms, locker rooms, or anything else of the kind.’ ”

In addition, following EO 14168, Lucas has taken the following actions:

• Announced that one of her priorities — for compliance, investigations, and litigation — is to defend the “biological and binary reality of sex and related rights, including women’s rights to single-sex spaces at work.”
• Ended the use of the “X” gender marker during the EEOC intake process for filing a charge of discrimination.
• Directed the modification of the charge of discrimination and related forms to remove the gender-neutral “Mx.” from the list of honorific options.
• Removed materials promoting what the EEOC calls gender ideology on the commission’s internal and external websites and documents, including webpages, statements, social media platforms, forms, trainings, and other communications.  

Trump also has ordered the EEOC to step back from “disparate-impact” enforcement, calling disparate-impact liability unlawful. In the EO “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy,” Trump ordered the EEOC chair and the U.S. attorney general to assess and “take appropriate action” on all pending investigations, civil suits, or positions taken under every federal civil rights law in the EEOC’s jurisdiction — including Title VII — that rely on a theory of disparate-impact liability.