EEOC Backs Trans Bathroom Restrictions for Federal Agencies
A 2-1 ruling allows federal agencies to bar transgender employees from bathrooms matching their gender identity.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled 2-1 that federal agencies can bar employees from using bathrooms that match their gender identity.
The decision reflects how the EEOC — tasked with enforcing federal civil rights laws against workplace discrimination — has been reshaped in a more conservative mold under the Trump administration and the leadership of Chair Andrea Lucas, who has previously cast the commission as an extension of the executive branch.
“I’ve been clear: The agency is not an independent agency,” Lucas told The New York Times last month. “It’s an executive branch agency. The will of the people elected the president, and I’m going to execute it.”
The ruling on workplace bathroom use opens with a line from President Donald Trump’s executive order stating that the United States government will recognize only two immutable sexes as a matter of policy — effectively setting the stage for the commission’s decision against a transgender complainant.
The complaint was brought by a civilian Army information technology specialist at Fort Riley, Kansas, who had previously used male-designated bathrooms and locker rooms but asked to use female-designated facilities after transitioning in 2025. Management rejected her request, citing the president’s executive order, and the IT specialist appealed the decision.
While the EEOC’s primary role is enforcing federal civil rights law in the private-sector workplace, it also has authority over complaints and appeals involving federal employees.
Despite the fact that neither Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 nor the U.S. Supreme Court has explicitly defined the term “sex” — and that the EEOC does not have authority to interpret the law — the two conservative commissioners said they could not wait for “authoritative guidance from the courts” before ruling on the IT specialist’s complaint.
“When we follow this path to its logical conclusion — and as applied to the facts presented before us — we find that Title VII permits a federal agency employer to maintain single-sex bathrooms and similar intimate spaces,” the majority wrote. “And it permits a federal agency employer to exclude employees, including trans-identifying employees, from opposite-sex facilities.”
The decision also misgenders the complainant, arguing that access to sex-segregated spaces should be restricted based on a person’s assigned sex at birth.
“A man who identifies as a ‘transwoman’ is still a man; a woman who identifies as a ‘transman’ is still a woman,” the decision reads. “Both may be excluded from opposite-sex bathrooms as such.”
The decision also reverses EEOC precedent. In 2015, the commission ruled that denying a civilian Army employee access to a bathroom that aligns with their gender identity, requiring that employee to use a single-occupancy restroom, and subjecting that employee to repeated misgendering could contribute to a hostile work environment.
Seeking to align their ruling with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which held that Title VII prohibits employers from firing or refusing to hire workers based on sexual orientation or gender identity, the conservative commissioners argued that the decision does not extend to bathroom access. They said the Fort Riley employee’s sex, “which was still immutably male,” justified restricting access to the women’s restroom.
The commission’s sole Democratic member, Kalpana Kotagal, dissented.
“The decision rests on the false premise that transgender workers are not worthy of the agency’s protection from discrimination and harassment and that protecting them threatens the rights of other workers,” Kotagal wrote. “Worse, it suggests that transgender people do not exist. That belief is contradicted by science and is not grounded in the law.”
U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, condemned the decision as a “slap in the face to every American who has faced discrimination because of their gender identity.”
The Human Rights Campaign called the ruling “the latest in the [Trump] administration’s weaponization of an agency designed to keep all workers safe.”
Support Metro Weekly’s Journalism
These are challenging times for news organizations. And yet it’s crucial we stay active and provide vital resources and information to both our local readers and the world. So won’t you please take a moment and consider supporting Metro Weekly with a membership? For as little as $5 a month, you can help ensure Metro Weekly magazine and MetroWeekly.com remain free, viable resources as we provide the best, most diverse, culturally-resonant LGBTQ coverage in both the D.C. region and around the world. Memberships come with exclusive perks and discounts, your own personal digital delivery of each week’s magazine (and an archive), access to our Member's Lounge when it launches this fall, and exclusive members-only items like Metro Weekly Membership Mugs and Tote Bags! Check out all our membership levels here and please join us today!
You must be logged in to post a comment.