The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission released its updated federal workplace guidance on Monday, which addresses preferred pronouns, bathrooms, and abortion.
According to the new guidance, refusal by an employer to use an employee’s preferred pronouns or barring them from using a bathroom that aligns with their gender identity constitutes unlawful workplace harassment. Additionally, discriminating against employees for their abortion or contraception decisions is a type of sex discrimination.
The guidance is not legally binding, but lays out a blueprint for how the EEOC will enforce anti-bias laws and can be cited in court to back up legal arguments.
Some Republicans and conservative and religious groups had criticized the expansive guidance after the commission unveiled a draft version in September. They said it conflicts with state laws on abortion and LGBTQ issues and fails to acknowledge that religious employers are exempt from anti-discrimination laws in many cases. […]
The Democrat-led commission approved the guidance in a 3-2 vote on Friday, with Republican Commissioners Andrea Lucas and Keith Sonderling dissenting, a spokesman for the agency said.
Lucas, an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump, said in a statement that the guidance would push many employers to eliminate single-sex bathrooms and facilities for showering, dressing, and sleeping, exposing women to increased risk of harassment and assault.
"Biological sex is real, and it matters. Sex is binary (male and female) and is immutable," she said.
More than one-third of the hundreds of thousands of worker complaints the EEOC received between 2016 and 2023 included allegations of harassment, the commission said. (Reuters)
“Harassment, both in-person and online, remains a serious issue in America’s workplaces. The EEOC’s updated guidance on harassment is a comprehensive resource that brings together best practices for preventing and remedying harassment and clarifies recent developments in the law,” said EEOC Chair Charlotte A. Burrows in a statement. “The guidance incorporates public input from stakeholders across the country, is aligned with our Strategic Enforcement Plan, and will help ensure that individuals understand their workplace rights and responsibilities.”
In a longer statement issued to Fox News Digital, Lucas blasted the new guidance.
"Women’s sex-based rights in the workplace are under attack—and from the EEOC, the very federal agency charged with protecting women from sexual harassment and sex-based discrimination at work. In its new harassment guidance, the Commission formally takes the position that for both private companies and federal employers, harassing conduct under Title VII includes ‘denial of access to a bathroom or other sex-segregated facility consistent with [an] individual’s gender identity,’" the EEOC Commissioner said.
"Relatedly, the Commission declares that harassing conduct includes ‘repeated and intentional use of a name or pronoun inconsistent with [an] individual’s known gender identity.’ The Commission’s guidance effectively eliminates single-sex workplace facilities and impinges on women’s (and indeed, all employees’) rights to freedom of speech and belief," she added. "In issuing this guidance, the EEOC ignores biological reality; dismisses the sex-based privacy and safety needs of women; disregards decades of safeguarding principles for women and girls; and fundamentally betrays its mission."
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