A complaint filed by 18 says against the Democrat-run professional organization alleges that new federal regulations that would essentially power employers and employees to use trans pronouns are illegal.
The lawsuit brought by Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and 17 other attorneys general on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee alleges that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s unilateral decision to incorporate so-called “gender identity” would constitute a” broad gender-identity demands without congressional acceptance.”
” In America, the Constitution gives the power to make laws to the person’s elected staff, not to inexplicable commission, and this EEOC direction is an assault on our legal separation of powers”, Skrmetti said in a speech.  ,” When, as these, a national company invests in government , over , the persons instead of government , by , the people, it undermines the validity of our laws and alienates Americans from our lawful system“.
The” Enforcement Document” that the EEOC released on April 29 “requires all covered employers and employees to use others ‘ preferred pronouns, allow transgender people to use the shower, locker room, or restroom to correspond to their gender identity, and refrain from requiring employees to adhere to the dress code that corresponds to their biological sex,” according to the lawsuit.
The organization cited Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch’s and Chief Justice John Roberts ‘ 2018 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County as evidence of the agency’s new guidance. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh dissented, predicting Bostock would set off decades of litigation about sex and gender.
The high court ruled in that case that Title VII’s prohibition on” sex” discrimination applies to firing an employee” simply for being homosexual or transgender.” While Gorsuch claimed women and men are interchangeable and thus” sex” discrimination includes “gender” discrimination, the attorneys general note in their suit against the EEOC that SCOTUS “expressly declined to ‘ prejudge’ issues like ‘ bathrooms, locker rooms, and dress codes ‘ under Title VII’s anti discrimination provision”.
The recently released EEOC regulations are similar to rules the agency previously issued in June 2021 that argued, “in certain circumstances”, an employer or fellow employee’s “use of pronouns or names that are inconsistent with an individual’s gender identity” could be” considered harassment”. The agency also used SCOTUS’s Bostock decision to justify that regulation.
In October 2022, the EEOC’s rules were overturned by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk ruled in his decision that the agency’s guidance “issuing substantive, legislative rules through improper procedures” violated numerous federal laws and its own regulations.
” The June 15 guidance , imposes dress- code, bathroom and pronoun accommodations as ‘ existing requirements under the law’ and ‘ established legal positions’ in light of , Bostock , and prior EEOC decisions interpreting Title VII]of the Civil Rights Act of 1964]”, Kacsmaryk , wrote. ” But Title VII—as interpreted in , Bostock—does not require such accommodations”.
The Society for Human Resource Management reported that the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee “temporarily blocked” the guidance because it lacked state-level authority to enforce it. The Tennessee court concluded that EEOC was required to follow its novel gender-identity guidance’s notice and comment procedures, contrary to the Texas court’s findings, according to Skrmetti and his fellow attorneys general, but did not address” the substantive flaws with EEOC’s reading of Title VII.”
The Democrat-controlled Department of Education unilaterally revised Title IX rules to allow men to “identify” as women to invade women’s spaces in schools, prompting the EEOC’s persistent attempts to force employers to adopt extremist gender theory. By expanding the Title IX prohibition against sex discrimination to include “gender identity,” a term that was never mentioned in the original law, the new guidelines “effectively erase protections for sex-based spaces,” according to my colleague Jordan Boyd.
This entails that men who declare themselves to be women can play in sports leagues that were previously only for women, such as locker rooms and sororities. A flurry of lawsuits from GOP-led states has resulted from the new regulations. Both Florida and Oklahoma have issued warnings to their schools.
The Federalist staff writer Shawn Fleetwood graduated from the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClear Health, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
