EEOC's Republican majority rescinded its 2024 workplace harassment guidance, including transgender protections

On January 22, 2026, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's Republican-appointed majority voted 2-1 to rescind its 2024 enforcement guidance on workplace harassment, skipping the standard notice-and-comment process typically required for guidance changes. Chair Andrea Lucas and recently installed Commissioner Brittany Panuccio voted to rescind; Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal, the panel's lone Democrat, voted against it. Lucas cited President Trump's executive order declaring "two immutable sexes" as one basis for the rescission and argued the vote "will not leave a void where employers are free to harass wherever they see fit."

The rescinded document was a nearly 200-page guidance the EEOC adopted in April 2024, its first update to harassment guidance in 25 years, following the Supreme Court's 2020 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County that Title VII's ban on sex discrimination extends to gay, lesbian, and transgender employees. The guidance described harassment standards across protected characteristics — race, sex, religion, age, and disability — and included examples specific to gender identity and sexual orientation, such as deliberate, repeated misgendering and denial of bathroom access consistent with gender identity. Lucas voted against the guidance when it was first adopted in 2024, specifically opposing those gender-identity provisions.

A federal court in Texas had already vacated the guidance's gender-identity and sexual-orientation section in May 2025, ruling the EEOC exceeded its statutory authority in issuing it; the agency had greyed out those paragraphs on its website with a notice of the ruling. In late December 2025, Lucas sent a final rule rescinding the entire remaining document to the White House Office of Management and Budget for approval, which was granted in early January 2026. The full guidance was removed from the EEOC's website the day after the vote. Kotagal said the guidance "strives to make workplaces safer for everyone" and likened its rescission to "throwing out the baby with the bathwater." More than 80 worker advocacy organizations, led by the National Women's Law Center, had signed a letter urging Lucas to preserve the guidance, and protesters gathered outside EEOC headquarters ahead of the vote.