Eighteen Republican-leaning states have sued the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging that the agency is defining gender-identity-based workplace harassment far more broadly than the landmark federal workplace-harassment law provides.
Spurring the complaint was new EEOC guidance on workplace-harassment enforcement, issued in April, stating that employers that refused to use transgender workers’ preferred pronouns or barred them from using bathrooms that match their gender identity would be committing workplace harassment under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.