The Trump Administration Has Made 150 Million American Workers Newly Vulnerable to Workplace Discrimination

When someone is fired or not hired because of their race, denied a promotion based on their gender or sexual orientation, or deprived of a needed accommodation for a disability, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is their first line of defense against lawbreaking employers. But recent aggressive anti-civil rights actions by the Trump administration jeopardize Americans’ ability to work free from discrimination and harassment. This issue brief outlines the EEOC’s critical role, the current threats to its work, and what Americans stand to lose.

Created by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the EEOC enforces the law’s prohibitions on discrimination in employment¹ based on “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”² Later, Congress expanded the EEOC’s role to include protecting against discrimination based on age,³ disability,⁴ pregnancy,⁵ and genetic information.⁶ At the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed that sex discrimination includes discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.⁷ In addition, the EEOC enforces Americans’ right to workplace accommodations—changes in the way they work to enable them to do their jobs—based on disability⁸ and pregnancy.⁹

When employers break the law by discriminating against workers, workers can file charges with the EEOC,¹⁰ which can investigate,¹¹ seek conciliation,¹² file its own lawsuit,¹³ or authorize claimants to bring suits.¹⁴ The EEOC can investigate and act upon systemic discrimination as well as violations against individual workers, allowing the commission to address employerwide discriminatory practices.¹⁵ In fiscal year 2024, the EEOC won nearly $700 million for victims of employment discrimination—money that went to workers whose employers violated their rights, helping make them whole while serving as a warning against future employer lawbreaking.¹⁶

The EEOC’s enforcement work is complemented by a host of proactive efforts to prevent lawbreaking discrimination. To ensure that workers understand their rights and employers understand their obligations, the EEOC provides detailed guidance to clarify and reinforce the laws it enforces.¹⁷ The commission also does extensive education work, from providing plain language materials explaining the law to conducting thousands of trainings each year.¹⁸

Essentially, all employees and job seekers, a total of approximately 153 million Americans, benefit from the protections the EEOC provides.¹⁹ The Equal Pay Act²⁰—a law requiring equal pay for equal work that the EEOC enforces—covers virtually all employers, while other laws enforced by the EEOC apply to all but the smallest employers.²¹ Whether they work in the private sector or for the government,²² practically all employees and those applying for jobs²³ are protected by the EEOC against illegal employer actions.

While employees writ large benefit from the EEOC, its protections are especially crucial for those whose employers have broken the law. For example, the EEOC alleged that the package delivery company DHL segregated its workforce, giving Black drivers more physically demanding work and placing them on more dangerous routes. The EEOC’s lawsuit resulted in a consent decree granting workers $8.7 million while enjoining DHL against retaliation and segregating employees based on race or racial demographics.²⁴ In another instance, according to the EEOC, for years, a night shift manager of a New England McDonald’s groped, hit, threatened, and otherwise harassed dozens of employees—many of them teenagers. The EEOC sued the franchise owner, resulting in a consent decree paying $1.6 million in lost wages and compensatory damages and barring the harassing manager from entering the restaurant, alongside policy changes and continued monitoring.²⁵ Victories such as these mean direct recovery for tens of thousands of workers each year,²⁶ while promising swift and rigorous enforcement—with significant cash penalties—against lawbreakers and protecting millions of workers against discrimination. The EEOC has recovered more than $10.5 billion since 1996, discouraging employers from breaking the law while putting money back in workers’ pockets.²⁷

The Trump administration is rapidly attempting to dismantle and distort the EEOC’s critical work, beginning with illegally firing two EEOC commissioners years before the end of their appointed terms.²⁸ Removing these commissioners was a shot across the bow against the agency’s effectiveness and independence²⁹ and, with them, workers’ antidiscrimination rights.

Following the playbook outlined in the far-right Project 2025,³⁰ the new EEOC leadership has swiftly turned the agency’s mission inside out, with enforcement priorities that transform the shield of civil rights law into a sword against the most vulnerable.³¹ Instead of protecting workers of color against race-based discrimination,³² the EEOC’s acting chair has said the commission will focus on “rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination”³³—working against, rather than in support of, efforts to pursue racial equity. In the face of increasing anti-immigrant attacks,³⁴ the EEOC will prioritize “protecting American workers from anti-American national origin discrimination”³⁵ rather than guarding immigrant workers against discrimination.³⁶

Most prominently, following Executive Order 14168,³⁷ the EEOC’s acting chair announced steps to deprive transgender workers of their rights,³⁸ advancing an authoritarian agenda to aggressively police gender boundaries that place transgender people in danger while harming all Americans.³⁹ These attacks include prioritizing “for compliance, investigations, and litigation … defend[ing] the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights, including women’s rights to single-sex spaces at work”⁴⁰ and seeking rollbacks of policies protecting workers based on gender identity.⁴¹

The stakes of this shift are high for workers fighting back when their employers break the law. According to the EEOC, Asher Lucas, a transgender man, was working as a shift manager at a Michigan restaurant when employees subjected him to repeated, escalating transphobic harassment. When he complained, the restaurant fired him, along with coworkers who complained on his behalf.⁴² In October 2024, the EEOC sued on Lucas’ behalf for discrimination based on his transgender status in violation of the Civil Rights Act.⁴³ On February 24, 2025, specifically citing Executive Order 14168, the EEOC moved to dismiss the case, abandoning Lucas and reversing the commission’s position.⁴⁴ Transgender workers now must rely on an EEOC actively working against, rather than for them.

Moreover, these early moves are likely only the beginning. Project 2025 argued for the EEOC to “disclaim its regulatory pretensions” and stop issuing guidance, technical assistance, and other clarifying documents⁴⁵—sentiments the commission’s acting chair has previously echoed.⁴⁶ EEOC guidance and other documents are critical tools to help workers understand and enforce their rights and employers understand and comply with their obligations, without which antidiscrimination law becomes less clear and less effective. Similarly, Project 2025 called for the elimination of EEOC workforce data collection necessary to understand and remedy discrimination.⁴⁷

The Trump administration’s attacks on the EEOC are attacks on Americans’ ability to earn a living free from discrimination and harassment. Hollowing out the EEOC while taking a wrecking ball to the rest of the nation’s civil rights infrastructure will unleash discrimination while depriving workers of the power to fight back when their employers break the law. This assault on bedrock civil rights cannot stand.