Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti led a coalition of 17 other states in filing a lawsuit challenging the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) final guidance on harassment in the workplace which went into effect on April 29.
The EEOC’s guidance titled “Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace” broadens Title VII’s prohibition of “sex-based harassment” to include, among other things, “misgendering” and the enforcement of “sex-segregated” facilities, including restrooms.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s new guidance extending Title VII protections is yet another blatant act of unconstitutional federal overreach.
Today, TN leads 18 states in filing suit against the EEOC in defense of our businesses, universities, and governments… pic.twitter.com/DzAhPTNfE7
— TN Attorney General (@AGTennessee) May 13, 2024
The updated guidance on sexual orientation and gender identity, per the EEOC, reads as follows:
Sex-based discrimination under Title VII includes employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Accordingly, sex-based harassment includes harassment based on sexual orientation or gender identity, including how that identity is expressed. Harassing conduct based on sexual orientation or gender identity includes epithets regarding sexual orientation or gender identity; physical assault due to sexual orientation or gender identity; outing (disclosure of an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity without permission); harassing conduct because an individual does not present in a manner that would stereotypically be associated with that person’s sex; repeated and intentional use of a name or pronoun inconsistent with the individual’s known gender identity (misgendering); or the denial of access to a bathroom or other sex-segregated facility consistent with the individual’s gender identity.
Skrmetti’s lawsuit, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, argues that the EEOC’s new guidance is “an exemplar of recent federal agency efforts to enshrine sweeping gender-identity mandates without congressional consent.”
“In America, the Constitution gives the power to make laws to the people’s elected representatives, not to unaccountable commissioners, and this EEOC guidance is an attack on our constitutional separation of powers,” Skrmetti said in a statement. “When, as here, a federal agency engages in government over the people instead of government by the people, it undermines the legitimacy of our laws and alienates Americans from our legal system.”
“This end-run around our constitutional institutions misuses federal power to eliminate women’s private spaces and punish the use of biologically-accurate pronouns, all at the expense of Tennessee employers,” Skrmetti added.
Skrmetti was joined in filing the lawsuit by the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia.
Monday’s lawsuit comes nearly two weeks after Skrmetti filed another lawsuit challenging the Biden administration’s Department of Education over its finalized rule to rewrite Title IX to encompass gender identity and sexual orientation, as previously reported by The Tennessee Star.
Watch Skrmetti’s remarks on Monday’s lawsuit here:
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “A.G. Jonathon Skrmetti” by Tennessee Attorney General’s Office.
It’s good to see the Attorney General focus on a problem that’s so central to all Tennessean’s daily lives….
/S