The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has made significant changes under the current Trump Administration, particularly in regards to gender, pregnancy/abortion, and AI bias, as summarized below:

1. Gender

On January 28, 2025, the EEOC Acting Chair Andrea Lucas announced that the agency was returning to its “mission of protecting women from sexual harassment and sex-based discrimination in the workplace by rolling back the Biden administration’s gender identity agenda.” Pursuant to President Trump’s Executive Order 14168 (which directed federal agencies to enforce laws governing sex-based rights, protections, opportunities, and accommodations to protect men and women as biologically distinct sexes), Acting Chair Lucas took the following actions:

• Announced that one of her priorities—for compliance, investigations, and litigation—is to defend the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights, including women’s rights to single-sex spaces at work.
• Removed the agency’s “pronoun app,” a feature in employees’ Microsoft 365 profiles, which allowed an employee to opt to identify pronouns, content which then appeared alongside the employee’s display name across all Microsoft 365 platforms, including Outlook and Teams. This content was displayed both to internal and external parties with whom EEOC employees communicated.
• Ended the use of the “X” gender marker during the intake process for filing a charge of discrimination.
• Directed the modification of the charge of discrimination and related forms to remove “Mx.” from the list of prefix options.
• Commenced review of the content of EEOC’s “Know Your Rights” poster, which all covered employers are required by law to post in their workplaces.
• Removed materials promoting gender ideology on the Commission’s internal and external websites and documents, including webpages, statements, social media platforms, forms, trainings, and others. The agency’s review and removal of such materials remains ongoing. Where a publicly accessible item cannot be immediately removed or revised, a banner has been added to explain why the item has not yet been brought into compliance.

Although Acting Chair Lucas currently cannot rescind portions of the agency’s harassment guidance that are inconsistent with Executive Order 14168, Acting Chair Lucas remains opposed to those portions of the guidance. Lucas stated that “Biology is not bigotry. Biological sex is real, and it matters…Sex is binary (male and female) and immutable. It is not harassment to acknowledge these truths—or to use language like pronouns that flow from these realities, even repeatedly.”

2. The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (“PWFA”) and Abortion

The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (“PWFA”) requires employers to provide accommodations for pregnant workers. The EEOC’s Biden-era final rule interpreted the PWFA to include abortion-related accommodations. The Attorneys General of 17 states, filed legal challenges against EEOC’s final rule on the PWFA, arguing that the rules were illegal because abortions are not explicitly mentioned in the PWFA. The EEOC has now indicated that it will be rescinding the Biden-era’s interpretation of the PWFA, because they combine “pregnancy and childbirth accommodations with accommodations related to the female sex, that is, female biology and reproduction” which was not the intent of the PWFA.

3. AI Bias Guidance

In May 2023, the EEOC issued a technical assistance document summarizing how AI algorithms in employment-related tools and programs may violate Title VII protections against discrimination toward applicants and employees, with guidance on how employers can prevent discrimination based on AI algorithms. The EEOC has removed this guidance from its website.

Conclusion

These EEOC changes and guidance indicate how the Trump Administration’s policies will impact employers on these important topics. However, employers should keep in mind that these changes and guidance are at the federal level, and may conflict with state law on these issues, such as in the state of California. Therefore, employers should consult with their legal counsel regarding any changes that are recommended by counsel in terms of the employer’s policies and procedures on these significant workplace topics.