During a flurry of first-day activity, President Donald Trump signed an executive order denying the existence of trans people. The order, “Defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government,” seeks to bar trans people from “single-sex spaces,” including those in the workplace.
“Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers,” Trump said on Jan. 20. “This is wrong.”
“Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being,” he said.
What this means going forward
Agencies and federal workers are no longer allowed to talk about gender identity outside of sex assigned at birth while “interpreting or applying statutes, regulations, or guidance and in all other official agency business, documents, and communications.”
Trump also asserts that Bostock v. Clayton County, which ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects workers based on sexual orientation and gender identity, “has harmed women.” The attorney general is also directed to issue guidance reasserting “the binary nature of sex.”
Acknowledging Trump’s Day 1 plans, Human Rights Campaign leadership said the organization will not “back down or be intimidated” by the incoming administration.
“Every person deserves to be treated with dignity and respect in all areas of their lives. No one should be subjected to ongoing discrimination, harassment and humiliation where they work, go to school, or access healthcare,” HRC President Kelley Robinson said in a Jan. 20 statement.
A summer 2024 report on perceptions of trans inclusion at work shows a disconnect between what workers say they need and what employers are able to provide. About 7 in 10 respondents in the Monster poll said they hadn’t received any training around trans awareness in the past year.
Meanwhile, Trump nominated Andrea Lucas as acting chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Jan. 21.
In the EEOC announcement, Lucas highlighted Trump’s orders and mentioned that her priorities will include “rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination” and “defending the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights, including women’s rights to single‑sex spaces at work.”
Lucas also outlined her stance on employment civil rights.
“We must reject the twin lies of identity politics: that justice is measured by group outcomes and that civil rights exist solely to remedy harms against certain groups,” she said.
Setting the tone for government talent strategy
Trump doubled down in a separate executive order published the same day, decrying “the commitment to the invented concept of ‘gender identity’.”
Robinson noted that LGBTQ+ people have long advocated to ensure equal treatment, from the military to the workplace. “Any attack on our rights threatens the rights of any person who doesn’t fit into the narrow view of how they should look and act,” Robinson said.
GLAAD, a media representation monitor, spotlighted that all White House resources regarding LGBTQ+ people, Pride Month, and HIV have been eliminated as of Jan. 21.
“President Trump claims to be a strong proponent of freedom of speech, yet he is clearly committed to censorship of any information containing or related to LGBTQ Americans and issues that we face,” GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement.
Ellis noted that the White House website changes indicate “the Trump administration’s goal of making it as difficult as possible for LGBTQ Americans to find federal resources or otherwise see ourselves reflected under his presidency.”
