Christian employers may now be protected from trans discrimination claims
A settlement between the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Christian Employers Alliance has been made (Getty Images, stock)
A new settlement between the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Christian Employers Alliance could dramatically change how some transgender and nonbinary workers challenge discrimination at work.
Under the agreement finalised 18 August, the EEOC agreed not to pursue charges against the Christian Employers Alliance or qualifying members over certain gender-identity-related workplace practices, including disputes involving pronoun use, sex-specific dress codes and access to sex-specific private spaces. The agreement grew out of a lawsuit filed by the CEA challenging a Biden-era EEOC guidance and a 2020 Supreme Court ruling that recognised gender identity and transgender status as protected under Title VII.
What makes the settlement particularly unusual is its scope. The protection isn’t limited to the employers involved in the original lawsuit. Instead, it extends to qualifying current and future CEA members, provided they are members when the alleged conduct takes place. The CEA has been promoting the arrangement to prospective members as protection that begins the moment they join.
The result is that a worker who believes they have experienced certain forms of gender identity discrimination at a CEA-member workplace may not be able to have the EEOC pursue the complaint against that employer. Instead, the worker may have to pursue the matter independently through the courts.
Former EEOC general counsel Karla Gilbride told The Intercept that she was unaware of another settlement that creates this kind of permanent protection from agency investigation, describing the categorical exclusion from investigation as unprecedented. The CEA and its lawyers at Alliance Defending Freedom, meanwhile, have celebrated the agreement in public statements as a victory for religious freedom and an allowance for Christian employers to operate according to their beliefs.
The settlement comes as the EEOC, under Trump-appointed chair Andrea Lucas, has dramatically shifted its approach to transgender workplace protections. The agency has rolled back Biden-era guidance on gender identity, while Lucas has made defending what she calls the “biological and binary reality of sex” a stated priority.
The CEA says the settlement protects religious employers from government overreach. For trans and nonbinary workers employed by qualifying CEA members, this could mean a major loss of access to one of the federal government’s primary avenues for addressing workplace discrimination.
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