Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, LITIGATION NEWS, TRENDS—Civil rights organization challenges EEOC’s new ‘Trans Exclusion Policy’, (Jul 30, 2025)

By Brandi O. Brown, J.D.

Under this new policy, so named by the LGBTQ+ organization, the EEOC has, for example, refused “to process viable Title VII charges simply because of who the charging party is.”

According to a lawsuit filed in federal court in Maryland yesterday by FreeState Justice, Maryland’s oldest statewide legal-services nonprofit organization serving the state’s LGBTQ+ population, the EEOC, because of what the group alleges is the agency’s new “Trans Exclusion Policy,” has violated the law because it has “ceased carrying out its statutorily mandated charge-investigation process with respect to all other charges tied to gender-identity discrimination,” and has “ceased litigating” cases on behalf of transgender claimants.

This new policy, the group alleges, “deprives transgender workers of the full set of charge investigation and other enforcement protections that the EEOC provides to other workers.” Under the policy, they allege that the agency is “refusing to process viable Title VII charges simply because of who the charging party is.”

Lucas’s “priorities” and dismissal of lawsuits. They describe the development of the new policy, noting that first, beginning in January, the EEOC’s Acting Chair announced the agency’s response to Executive Order 14168, including that one of her “priorities” was to “defend the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights” and to remove materials “promoting gender ideology.” The agency halted the charge-investigation process for charges tied to sexual orientation or gender identify.

Next, it moved to dismiss with prejudice its own employment discrimination lawsuits brought on behalf of transgender charging parties, which it had been prosecuting. In April, they allege, the agency directed that all charges of gender-identity discrimination be categorically classified as meritless and suitable for dismissal. That was walked back somewhat earlier this month—the complaint alleges that staff were told that the agency would resume accepting some, though not all, charges of discrimination by transgender workers.

Now, they allege, the EEOC “purports to accept for processing only certain kinds of charges brought by transgender charging parties—standalone hiring, firing, and promotion claims—but no others”—charges of gender-identity discrimination the agency believes “fall squarely” under Bostock.

The federal lawsuits the agency sought to dismiss, they allege, “concerned transgender workers who had been subjected to egregious conditions in the workplace: slurs and grossly derogatory statements, graphic sexual comments and unwanted physical touching, misgendering, unfavorable shift changes, and termination after disclosing their gender identity—often in combination.”

The lawsuit claims that the agency’s actions are ultra vires because they violate Title VII and also violate the Fifth Amendment and the APA in multiple ways. They seek a declaration that the policy is unlawful and unconstitutional and seek injunctive relief and damages.

The case is No. 1:25-cv-02482.

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