Civil rights agency's acting chief to face questions on anti-DEI,
transgender stances
[June 18, 2025]
By ALEXANDRA OLSON and CLAIRE SAVAGE
WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP) — The acting chief of the country’s top agency for
enforcing worker rights will face questions at a Senate committee
hearing Wednesday over her efforts to prioritize anti-diversity
investigations while sidelining certain racial and gender discrimination
cases and quashing protections for transgender workers.
Andrea Lucas, who was first appointed to the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission in 2020 and elevated to acting chief in January,
is one of four Labor Department nominees to appear before the Senate
Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Her nomination to
serve another five-year term as an EEOC commissioner requires Senate
confirmation, though whether she stays on as chief will be up to
President Donald Trump.
Lucas, an outspoken critic of diversity, equity and inclusion practices
and promoter of the idea that there are only two immutable sexes, has
moved swiftly to enact Trump's civil rights agenda after he abruptly
fired two of the EEOC's Democratic commissioners before the end of their
five-year terms, an unprecedented move in the agency's 60-year history
that has been challenged in a lawsuit.
Lucas is prioritizing worker rights that conservatives argue have been
ignored by the EEOC. That includes investigating company DEI practices,
defending the rights of women to same-sex spaces and fighting
anti-Christian bias in the workplace.
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, chairman of the Senate committee holding
the hearing, has championed many of those causes. He accused the EEOC
under the Biden administration of “injecting its far-left" agenda into
the workplace, including by updating sexual harassment guidelines to
warn against misgendering transgender workers and including abortion as
a pregnancy-related condition under regulations for the Pregnant Workers
Fairness Act.
Questioning the EEOC's independence
Democrats on the committee are likely to grill Lucas over criticism that
she overstepped her authority by profoundly shifting the EEOC's
direction to the whims of the president in the absence of a quorum,
which commission has lacked since Trump fired the two commissioners.
Sen. Patty Murray, a member of the committee, said she will oppose any
EEOC nominations unless Trump reinstates the two fired Democratic
commissioners, which she and more than 200 other Democratic senators and
Congress members condemned in a letter to the president as an abuse of
power.
“President Trump is weaponizing the independent EEOC to serve his
personal political agenda, firing commissioners without cause and
warping the mission of the EEOC beyond recognition,” Murray said in a
statement ahead of the hearing. “Commissioner Lucas is a right-wing
extremist who has been in lockstep behind Trump’s pro-discrimination
agenda.”
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The emblem of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
is shown on a podium in Vail, Colo., Feb. 16, 2016. (AP Photo/David
Zalubowski, File)
Lucas has made clear her views of the limitations of the EEOC's
autonomy. In a recent memo to employers, Lucas declared that the
“EEOC is an executive branch agency, not an independent agency" that
will "fully and robustly comply" with all executive orders. That
includes two orders that Trump signed in January: one directing
federal agencies to eliminate their own DEI activities and end any
“equity-related” grants or contracts, and the other imposing a
certification provision on all companies and institutions with
government contracts or grant dollars to demonstrate that they don’t
operate DEI programs.
The EEOC's new approach alarmed more than 30 civil rights groups,
which sent a letter to the Senate committee demanding that Lucas
face a hearing. The groups argued that the EEOC was created by
Congress under 1964 Civil Rights Act to be a bipartisan agency that
would function independently from the executive branch.
The EEOC, the only federal agency empowered to investigate
employment discrimination in the private sector, received more than
88,000 charges of workplace discrimination in fiscal year 2024. Its
commissioners are appointed by the president to staggered terms, and
no more than three can be from the same party. Much of the EEOC's
authority is granted by Congress, including the obligation to
investigate all complaints and enact regulations for implementing
some laws.
EEOC shifts the focus of discrimination cases
Under Lucas, the EEOC dropped seven of its own lawsuits on behalf of
transgender or nonbinary workers. It also moved to drop a racial
discrimination case on behalf of Black, Native American and
multiracial job applicants after Trump ordered federal agencies to
stop pursuing discrimination that falls under “disparate impact
liability,” which aims to identify practices that systematically
exclude certain demographic groups.
Instead, Lucas has turned the EEOC's attention to investigating
company DEI practices. In her most high profile move, she sent
letters to 20 law firms demanding information about diversity
fellowships and other programs she claimed could be evidence of
discriminatory practices.
Lucas has also repeatedly encouraged workers nationwide to come
forward with DEI complaints. She launched a hotline for
whistleblowers and said workers should be encouraged to report bad
DEI practices after a Supreme Court decision made it easier for
white and other non-minority workers to bring reverse-discrimination
lawsuits.
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