Texas federal judge strikes down transgender workplace protections

(CN) — A federal judge in Texas ruled Thursday that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission exceeded its authority by issuing a guidance providing protections for transgender employees.

U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas said portions of a 2024 enforcement guidance issued by the commission regarding the definition of “sex” under Title VII and what constitutes sex-based harassment were contrary to law.

The commission said in that guidance that Title VII’s prohibition on workplace discrimination on the basis of “sex” includes sexual orientation and gender identity. It also said that refusing to use an employee’s preferred pronouns or allow them to wear clothes or use the bathroom that matches their gender identity qualifies as sex-based harassment.

But Kacsmaryk, a Donald Trump appointee, vacated those portions of the guidance, finding that “Title VII does not require employers or courts to blind themselves to the biological differences between men and women.”

The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by the state of Texas and the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, which challenged the guidance in their capacity as employers.

On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump issued a sweeping executive order targeting “gender ideology.” As part of the order, Trump directed the EEOC to rescind the 2024 enforcement guidance.

In response, then-commissioners Charlotte Burrows, Jocelyn Samuels and Kalpana Kotagal issued a statement affirming that LGBTQ workers “are protected by federal law and entitled to the full measure of America’s promise of equal opportunity in the workplace.”

Days later, Trump removed Burrows and Samuels from the commission, leaving the EEOC without the quorum needed to formally rescind the guidance.

Kacsmaryk said the guidance’s definition of sex “contravenes Title VII’s plain text by expanding the scope of ‘sex’ beyond the biological binary: male and female.”

He also found that the commission exceeded its authority by expanding the definition of discriminatory harassment to include protections for pronoun, dress and bathroom preferences, as refusing to honor such preferences does not amount to “disadvantageous terms or conditions of employment to which members of the other sex are not exposed.”

“If a male employee who identifies as female is required to use male facilities, he is not exposed to ‘disadvantageous terms’ unlike other males,” Kacsmaryk wrote. “Instead, he must use male facilities like all other males.”

Kacsmaryk ruled that the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 2020 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County that firing an employee because of their sexual orientation or gender identity constitutes sex-based discrimination under Title VII does not provide a legal basis for the EEOC’s guidance, finding that the court’s ruling in Bostock was limited only to firing decisions.

“Bostock expressly refused to redefine ‘sex’ under Title VII,” Kacsmaryk wrote.

The EEOC did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling. The Heritage Foundation and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton celebrated the ruling in separatestatements.