18 Republican-Led States Are Suing for the Right to Discriminate Against Trans Workers

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Eighteen Republican-led states have filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), claiming that new rules protecting transgender workers from harassment and discrimination are unconstitutional.

The lawsuit, filed in Tennessee’s Eastern District on Monday, is led by Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and joined by 17 other state attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia. In the suit, the AGs collectively reject the EEOC’s new guidance document released April 29, which declares that misgendering, deadnaming, outing, and other forms of anti-trans discrimination in the workplace are prohibited under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

Because the EEOC’s trans-inclusive interpretation of “sex-based discrimination” is based on President Biden’s 2021 executive order, rather than an act of Congress, the AGs’ complaint argues that the commission overstepped its authority in issuing the new rules. Though the suit acknowledges the landmark 2020 Supreme Court decision that ruled an employer cannot fire a worker for being LGBTQ+, the plaintiff states argue that the Court did not include conduct like bathroom access or uniform requirements in its decision, and that the EEOC’s interpretation of the case is flawed.

The suit also demands the right to refer to trans people using “sex-based pronouns,” and contends that all states will suffer “irreparable harm” if they are not allowed to enforce their own laws requiring “sex-segregated spaces,” such as Mississippi’s new ban on trans people in bathrooms, changing rooms, and dormitories that do not match their birth-assigned sex. The plaintiffs are seeking immediate injunctive relief to prevent the EEOC from enforcing its rules, and hope to have the guidance vacated altogether.

“[T]his EEOC guidance is an attack on our constitutional separation of powers,” Skrmetti claimed in a statement on Monday, accusing the EEOC of orchestrating an “end-run around our constitutional institutions” to “punish the use of biologically-accurate pronouns” at taxpayers’ expense.

The EEOC has already taken legal action against at least one company, Illinois-based hog farm Sis-Bro Inc., for allegedly allowing a hostile and discriminatory environment to fester against one trans worker for several years. In March, the EEOC filed a lawsuit alleging that after one worker began transitioning in 2018, she was subjected to repeated deadnaming, misgendering, and derogatory comments about her identity, conduct which allegedly escalated to sexual assault and harassment in 2020, eventually forcing her to quit.

“Since he has taken office the Attorney General [Skrmetti] has acted against the rights of LGBTQ people at a staggering rate,” said Tennessee Equality Project spokesperson Chris Sanders in a statement to Newsweek on Wednesday. “This latest effort seeks to hamper the ability of the EEOC to make sure that transgender and non-binary people receive the equal protection of the laws, which is their right under the Fourteenth Amendment.

“People have a right to work in an environment free of discrimination,” Sanders added. “I remain disturbed by this clearly obsessive pattern of trying to block every single policy lifeline extended to LGBTQ people by the federal government."

The new rules officially make harassment and discrimination against LGBTQ\+ students a form of sex discrimination.

This week’s lawsuit is the latest legal attack on the Biden administration’s LGBTQ+ rights agenda, and follows the issuance of new Title IX anti-discrimination rules last month. The new rules, which assert broader protections for LGBTQ+ students, have been the subject of frequent Republican challenges since they were first proposed several years ago. But LGBTQ+ advocates have also criticized Biden for failing to introduce protections for trans student athletes, despite annual claims by the president that he would “have [their] backs.”

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