Today, President Donald Trump nominated former Bush administration official Daniel M. Gade for the remaining open seat on the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In June, President Trump nominated corporate attorney Janet Dhillon to chair the commission.
Harper Jean Tobin, Director of Policy at the National Center for Transgender Equality, offered the following statement in response:
The EEOC plays a central role in ensuring all Americans have an equal chance to get a job and earn a living. For years now, the EEOC has worked to protect LGBT workers from unlawful discrimination that can be personally and economically devastating. We urge the Senate to hold hearings, thoroughly vet these nominees, and assess whether they are committed to vigorously enforcing our equal employment laws for the protection of all workers, including LGBT workers—or whether they will further solidify the Trump administration’s push to undermine civil rights.
The EEOC first explicitly recognized that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects transgender employees in 2012, following nearly two decades of case law, and adopted the same position regarding sexual orientation discrimination in 2015. The EEOC and the Trump Department of Justice recently filed competing briefs respectively supporting and opposing protection for LGBT workers in a major case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
