The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is abandoning its core mission under the Trump Administration. Established under the 1964 Civil Rights Act to enforce the nation’s civil rights laws and prevent unlawful employment discrimination, the agency is now being wielded as a weapon against the workers it was designed to protect.
Under Chair Andrea Lucas, the EEOC has become a tool in the administration’s assault on civil rights protections for women, transgender workers and other protected groups. The agency has made sweeping enforcement changes attempting to strip transgender workers of their Title VII protections, announced it will no longer process complaints alleging disparate impact violations – a cornerstone of civil rights enforcement for over 50 years – and is dismantling critical infrastructure for monitoring workplace discrimination. The Senate’s confirmation of Brittany Panuccio as a commissioner in late 2025 reestablished a quorum, giving the agency additional authority for the Chair and Commissioner Panuccio to advance this anti-worker, anti-civil rights agenda.
Attacking Disparate Impact Liability
Disparate impact theory – a legal concept where a seemingly neutral policy or practice harms a protected group more than others – has been fundamental to employment law since the Supreme Court’s unanimous 1971 decision in Griggs v. Duke Power Company. The Court recognized that seemingly neutral employment policies – such as unnecessary educational requirements or aptitude tests – actually violate Title VII when they disproportionately harm workers in protected groups and aren’t job-related or consistent with business necessity. Disparate impact prevents employers from using policies that, whether intentionally or not, create discriminatory barriers.
Congress codified disparate impact liability in the Civil Rights Act of 1991, cementing its role in anti-discrimination enforcement. The doctrine has become increasingly crucial for addressing discrimination enabled by algorithmic decision-making and artificial intelligence in hiring and employment.
Yet the Trump Administration has revived constitutional attacks on this half-century old cornerstone of civil rights law. Executive Order 14281 claims that disparate impact liability is unconstitutional and directs the government to eliminate its use “to the maximum degree possible.” The EO explicitly directs agencies to “deprioritize enforcement” of disparate impact claims under Title VII.
In response, the EEOC directed the dismissal of all complaints based on disparate impact theories, a seismic shift that abandons half a century of enforcement precedent and leaves workers vulnerable to discriminatory policies that may appear neutral on their face. Among these dismissals was a lawsuit against a chain of convenience stores for excluding workers from employment based on arrest and conviction records, which disproportionately excluded Black, Native American, and multiracial applicants. This was a case where the Commission had already found reasonable cause that there was “an ongoing, company-wide practice” of rejecting Black, American Indian/Alaska Native and multiracial candidates for all categories of positions because of their criminal history. When the EEOC moved to dismiss the case, one of the individual workers sought to intervene to continue protecting his rights.
Though disparate impact theory is enshrined in both statute and case law, when the primary employment discrimination enforcement agency publicly disavows the theory, it creates confusion among workers who have been harmed by disparate impact discrimination and potential attorneys who may represent them. This confusion undermines workers’ ability to enforce their rights and may result in victims of discrimination abandoning rightful claims.
Abandoning LGBTQ+ Workers
The EEOC is implementing the administration’s attacks on LGBTQ+ workers – particularly transgender workers – in defiance of existing law and Supreme Court precedent. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination “because of… sex.” In its landmark 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, the Supreme Court held that discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity is prohibited sex discrimination under Title VII. The EEOC had been consistently deciding cases and interpreting Title VII this way beginning with its 2012 landmark Macy v. Department of Justice decision.
Despite this settled law, President Trump issued Executive Order 14168 on his first day in office. The Order declares that “sex” does not include “gender identity.” It directed the government to “prioritize investigations and litigation” based on this reinterpretation and directed the EEOC to rescind its 2024 Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace. Several months later, a district court in Texas vacated relevant portions of the guidance. Chair Lucas, who had dissented when the guidance was issued, has explicitly stated her intention to rescind it. A rule to rescind the guidance is under review at the White House. A rule to rescind the guidance is under review at the White House.
The EEOC’s attacks on transgender workers have been comprehensive and systematic:
- The agency scrubbed references to sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination from its websites, statements, and forms.
- Employers must now report all employees as male or female on EEO-1 forms, erasing non-binary workers from federal data.
- Chair Lucas changed intake forms to allow only two sex options, eliminating the ability for workers to accurately self-identify or describe discrimination they experienced.
- EEOC employees can no longer identify their pronouns in emails and communications.
- The agency dismissed pending cases challenging discrimination against transgender workers, refusing to uphold these workers’ civil rights protections.
By walking away from cases in the midst of litigation, these dismissals leave these workers in precarious and disadvantaged circumstances. Those workers must suddenly and unexpectedly find new counsel or risk having their civil rights claims abandoned altogether. Several organizations are currently challenging the dismissals and unequal treatment of transgender complainants in court. The EEOC’s about-face, despite settled case law, misleads the legal community and potential victims of civil rights abuses about their legal rights, whether their claims are valid, and how to seek redress when the agency will no longer defend their rights.
Undermining Data Collection
The EEOC collects demographic and job category data from employers with 100 or more employees and certain federal contractors through EEO-1 reports. This firm-level data is essential for identifying patterns of discrimination and supporting enforcement actions.
This year, the agency shortened the data collection period to just five weeks (May-June 2025) and eliminated non-binary reporting options. Chair Lucas warned employers that “[t]here is no ‘diversity’ exception to Title VII’s requirements” and stated that, consistent with EO 14281, the agency would focus on disparate treatment claims, not disparate impact.
More troubling, many anticipate the EEOC will eliminate EEO-1 data collection altogether, as proposed in Project 2025. The agency is already dismantling its data and analytics office – the very office that administers EEO-1 reports and supports systemic litigation. Without this infrastructure, the EEOC will lose its ability to identify patterns of discrimination, monitor workplace trends, and enforce civil rights laws effectively. EEO-1 data enables the agency to start or support investigations when it shows significant disparities. For example, if a worker files a charge saying they were not hired because they are a woman, the EEOC can cross-reference the EEO-1 data for any patterns indicating a broader trend supporting the charge.
EEOC’s Independence at Stake
Chair Lucas’s aggressive implementation of President Trump’s attacks on civil rights illustrates the power of the unitary executive theory in action. When the president removed two Democratic commissioners – Charlotte Burrows and Jocelyn Samuels – before their terms had ended, he cleared the path to quickly establish a Republican majority and quorum at the EEOC. His message is unmistakable: commission or board members who act contrary to his political priorities, regardless of what the law requires, will face removal.
This shift threatens more than just the EEOC. The Supreme Court appears poised to overturn its decision in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States this term, which would eliminate the independence of agencies across the federal government – a form of governance that has protected America’s workers from political interference for nearly a century.
This first year of the Trump Administration demonstrates what is at stake when a civil rights enforcement agency is weaponized to serve an anti-worker, anti-civil rights agenda. The EEOC was created to protect workers from discrimination. Today, it is being used to enable it.
