Really Bad News!

I mean some really bad news: the Trump administration has stopped enforcing discrimination cases against trans people in the workplace!

Judge tosses lawsuit challenging civil rights agency’s pullback on transgender workplace protections

AP News

By  CLAIRE SAVAGE

June 15, 2026

A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit alleging that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is unlawfully refusing to enforce workplace protections for transgender workers.

Chief Maryland District Judge George L. Russell III dismissed the case on Friday, saying the court lacks jurisdiction over the complaint, and plaintiff FreeState Justice, a Maryland LGBTQ+ advocacy group, lacks standing to pursue it.

“While deeply troubling, the Court agrees with Defendants that the EEOC’s decision to alter its investigations of gender identity discrimination claims constitutes a discretionary decision over which the Court lacks authority to review,” said Russell, a nominee of President Barack Obama, in a memorandum opinion filed Friday.

[...]

On behalf of FreeState Justice, legal advocacy groups Democracy Forward and the National Women’s Law Center sued the EEOC in July 2025, alleging the agency’s “Trans Exclusion Policy” violates Supreme Court precedent, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Fifth Amendment’s Equal Protection guarantee, and the Administrative Procedure Act.

Not being a legal expert, I would have to say that what the judge said about jurisdiction is correct. However, it seems to me that the court did not address the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause issues directly. What I see is that they did not reach the discrimination question—whether a protected class (transgender people, as sex-based discrimination under Title VII) is being singled out for unequal treatment.

What the judge did was focus on whether an agency can determine its own enforcement policies. The court concluded that it can, but it did not reach the question of whether those policies, if they systematically exclude a protected class, would themselves be unlawful.

However, if the EEOC is systematically refusing to process or pursue transgender-related discrimination cases as a category, then that goes beyond ordinary enforcement discretion and begins to look like a discriminatory policy applied to a protected class.

So it is off to the appeals court we go. This may eventually reach the Supreme Court, where the key question will likely be whether courts can review only an agency’s policy itself, without considering whether that policy results in unequal enforcement of anti-discrimination protections.