EEOC reverses course on transgender workers’ right to choose restrooms

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EEOC reverses course on transgender employees’…

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EEOC reverses course on transgender employees’ proper to decide on restrooms

By Amanda Robert

February 27, 2026, 10:20 am CST

In a 2-1 ruling this week, the U.S. Equal Employment Alternative Fee mentioned Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 permits federal companies “to take care of single-sex bogs and comparable intimate areas” and “to exclude staff, together with trans-identifying staff, from opposite-sex services.”

The EEOC’s choice, which was issued Thursday, overturns a part of Lusardi v. Division of the Military, a fee ruling from 2015 that mentioned the U.S. Military discriminated in opposition to a transgender employee by not permitting her to make use of the ladies’s restroom. The EEOC mentioned its colleagues’ reasoning in that case was “concerningly threadbare.”

Bloomberg Legislation has protection of the choice.

On this newest case, the Military denied a request from a civilian IT specialist at Fort Riley, Kansas, to make use of female-designated bogs and locker rooms. The IT specialist had knowledgeable native administration that she now identifies as a lady.

The EEOC affirmed the Military’s choice, noting that female and male staff usually are not equally located with regards to bogs, and separating them within the office underneath these circumstances will not be discriminatory. The EEOC additionally mentioned there shouldn’t be an exception made for transgender staff.

Whereas the U.S. Supreme Court docket held in Bostock v. Clayton County in 2020 that Title VII protects lesbian, homosexual, bisexual and transgender employees from discrimination, it didn’t tackle using restrooms, the EEOC mentioned.

“Crucially, the rule introduced in Bostock is one in all equal therapy,” the EEOC mentioned, noting that the Military within the current case goals to deal with transgender staff the identical as staff who usually are not transgender.

“If a non-trans-identifying man requested to make use of the ladies’s rest room, the company certainly would have rebuffed the request,” the EEOC mentioned. “That the company offers the identical reply to female and male staff alike, and to trans-identifying and non-trans-identifying staff alike, solely goes to indicate its evenhandedness.”

Bloomberg Legislation reviews that Kalpana Kotagal, the one Democrat on the Republican-controlled EEOC, described the choice as “legally suspect.”

“The choice rests on the false premise that transgender employees usually are not worthy of the company’s safety from discrimination and harassment and that defending them threatens the rights of different employees,” Kotagal mentioned, based on Bloomberg Legislation. “Worse, it means that transgender folks don’t exist.”

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