President Donald Trump sacked two of the three Democratic commissioners of the federal agency in charge of enforcing workplace civil rights laws, in an extraordinary step aimed at carrying out his assault on some diversity and gender rights initiatives.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s two commissioners, Charlotte Burrows and Jocelyn Samuels, acknowledged in statements Tuesday that they were fired late Monday night. Both said they were looking at ways to fight their dismissals, describing their removal before the conclusion of their five-year terms as an extraordinary action that weakens the agency’s independence.
In a similar action, National Labor Relations Board member Gynne A. Wilcox and General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo were removed late Friday night, according to the agency. According to the NLRB website, Wilcox became the first Black woman to serve on the Board since its founding in 1935.
Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act established the EEOC, a nonpartisan five-member body, to protect workers from discrimination based on race, gender, handicap, and other protected characteristics. The commissioners are appointed by the president of the United States and confirmed by the Senate; however, their terms are staggered and intended to overlap presidential terms in order to maintain agency independence.
Following the two firings, the agency now has one Republican commissioner, Andrea Lucas, who Trump nominated as temporary EEOC head last week, one Democratic commissioner, Kalpana Kotagal, and three vacancies that Trump may fill. Another Republican commissioner, Keith Sonderling, resigned after Trump named him Deputy Secretary of Labor.
The EEOC panel investigates and penalizes firms who violate laws designed to protect workers from racial, gender, handicap, and other types of discrimination. The organization also develops significant regulations and standards for implementing anti-discrimination legislation, as well as providing workplace outreach and training.
In recent years, the agency’s Democratic and Republican commissioners have had significant disagreements on a number of matters. Last year, both Republican commissioners voted against new rules indicating that misgendering transgender employees or denying them access to a toilet consistent with their gender identification violated anti-discrimination legislation. The Republican commissioners also voted against regulations requiring companies to provide time off and other accommodations for abortions under the new Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.
The firings of Burrows and Samuels appear to be aimed at positioning the EEOC to aggressively crack down on employers with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, which the Trump administration believes veer into discrimination in their efforts to support racial minorities, women, and others.
Lucas, the new acting EEOC chair, stated last week that she will prioritize “rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination; protecting American workers from anti-American national origin discrimination; and defending the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights, including women’s rights to single-sex spaces at work.”
In contrast, the three Democratic commissioners submitted remarks last week opposing a flurry of executive orders aimed at stopping DEI practices in the federal workforce and private enterprises, as well as transgender worker rights. Their responses also stressed that despite Trump’s instructions, US anti-discrimination laws remain in effect, and that the EEOC must continue to enforce them.
Burrows, an EEOC commissioner since 2015, said in a statement Tuesday that the dismissal of two Democratic commissioners before the end of their terms “undermine the efforts of this independent agency to do the important work of protecting employees from discrimination, supporting employers’ compliance efforts, and expanding public awareness and understanding of federal employment laws.”
Samuels, who was appointed by Trump in 2020, stated that her demise “violates the law, and represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the EEOC as an independent agency – one that is not controlled by a single Cabinet secretary but operates as a multi-member body whose varying views are baked into the Commission’s design.”
Civil rights groups and organizations that encourage women’s growth in the workplace reacted quickly to the firings.
“Today’s shocking firings convey a terrible message: not all workers can rely on the EEOC. Under Trump’s proposed EEOC, the government will no longer protect you if you are a transgender or LGBT worker seeking equal treatment. “And if you are a person of color or a woman, your success at work is evidence of ‘illegal DEI,'” said Gaylynn Burroughs, vice president for education and workplace justice at the National Women’s Law Center.
Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, denounced the firings of EEOC commissioners and NLRB members. “These are yet more lawless actions by a president who thinks he is above the law and clearly could not care less about the rights of workers,” she stated during a press conference.
