The nonprofit organization Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) is preparing to sue the U.S. Secret Service over what it alleges are “arbitrary” diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) guidelines at the agency.
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Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Biden administration’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) over an allegedly “unlawful” April policy rewrite that changed the definition of discrimination to include “gender identity.”
The EEOC updated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to require both state and private employers to accommodate transgender employees by allowing men in women’s spaces, forcing the use of “preferred pronouns” and ending sex-specific dress codes. Paxton and the Heritage Foundation are challenging the rewrite, arguing that it violates the Administrative Procedure Act and does not have sufficient standing as the original wording prohibits sex-based discrimination but does not mandate special accommodations for the sexes, according to the lawsuit.
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Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti led a group of 19 other state attorneys general in filing a public comment letter in opposition to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) “Proposed Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace.”
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Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday signed two bills into law designed to reform public higher education institutions in Texas. One bans them from implementing DEI policies and another revises the tenure structure.
Both bills, authored by Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, passed the legislature during the regular legislative session. Senate Bill 17 bans public colleges and universities from implementing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies that prioritize gender, race, ethnicity and ideological beliefs as factors for hiring or admission policies. Earlier this year, Gov. Abbott’s chief of staff sent a letter to public higher education institutions and state agencies saying if they were implementing DEI policies, they were violating federal law. In response, the heads of Texas colleges and universities said they were “pausing” and reviewing their DEI policies. The new law requires them to terminate them.
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Americans once said, “As California goes, so goes the nation.” Hopefully after this legislative session, Americans will say, “As Texas goes, so goes the nation.”
The Lone Star State’s leaders are fighting fiercely right now to restore non-discrimination and equal rights under the law. These are American values embedded in U.S. civil rights laws and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, but they’re no longer practiced—or enforced.
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In a letter obtained by The Star News Network, four members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) are calling upon House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to hold hearings on the Biden administration’s “radical and legally unsupported proposals to change Title IX” to require that its prohibition on sex discrimination be interpreted to bar discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
The letter, signed by USCCR Commissioners labor attorney Peter Kirsanow, University of San Diego law professor Gail Heriot, Public Interest Legal Foundation President J. Christian Adams, and South Carolina African American Chamber of Commerce CEO Stephen Gilchrist, asserts to McCarthy that the Biden Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has erred in its claim that the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County “requires that Title IX’s prohibition on sex discrimination be interpreted to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.”
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A member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has written to Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan (R), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, warning that Joe Biden’s sweeping executive order embedding radical woke equity ideology in all agencies of the executive branch is a “Trojan Horse” that represents “a major step toward socialism.”
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Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Monday, which aims to stop the department’s recent guidance that makes a school’s nutritional assistance dependent on its gender policies.
“USDA Choice applies to beef at the market, not to our children’s restrooms,” Brnovich said in a press release. “This threat of the Biden administration to withhold nutritional assistance for students whose schools do not submit to its extreme agenda is unlawful and despicable.”
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Connecticut’s former Public Health Commissioner Renee Coleman-Mitchell filed a lawsuit this week against the state and the Department of Public Health, for Gov. Ned Lamont’s (D) decision to fire her in 2020.
Her lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Connecticut, alleges that Gov. Ned Lamont (D) dismissed her “simply on the basis that he did not prefer to have an older, African American female in the public eye as the individual leading the State in the fight against COVID-19.” The complaint argues that she is entitled to compensatory damages for violations of the anti-retaliation and anti-discrimination components of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as well as the state’s Fair Employment Practices Act.
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The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a landmark civil rights law protects gay, lesbian and transgender people from discrimination in employment, a resounding victory for LGBT rights from a conservative court.
The court decided by a 6-3 vote that a key provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 known as Title VII that bars job discrimination because of sex, among other reasons, encompasses bias against LGBT workers.
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