Compliance Stuff

On January 22, 2026, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission voted to rescind its Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace . The proposal to rescind the guidance was approved two-to-one, with Chair Andrea Lucas (R) and Commissioner Britanny Panuccio (R) voting to repeal the document, and Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal (D) voting against rescission. The rescission is unsurprising now that the Commission has a quorum. Almost immediately after assuming her role as then-acting chair in January 2025, now-Chair Lucas signaled her opposition to portions of the guidance and indicated that she would seek to rescind or revise it as soon as she had the votes to do so. While the rescission is effective immediately, as a legal matter, the repeal of non-binding EEOC guidance does not dramatically alter federal anti-harassment law, nor does it bear on state civil rights laws that prohibit workplace harassment. History of Harassment Enforcement Guidance In 2015, the EEOC established ...

On May 15, 2025, the district court for the Northern District of Texas issued an order vacating the gender-identity portions of the EEOC’s 2024 Enforcement Guidance.  In the order, District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk stated that all language defining “sex” under Title VII to include “sexual orientation” and/or “gender identity” was contrary to law and therefore vacated.  Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia  (2020) So, where does the law stand in regards to how “sex” is defined under Title VII and whether it includes gender-identity or sexual orientation?  The Supreme Court previously addressed the issue, though in a limited capacity.  In  Bostock , Justice Gorsuch (joined by Justices Roberts, Ginsburg, Bryer, Sotomayor, and Kagan) established that an employer who terminates an individual based on that individual being gay or transgender violates the law; and this remains the law of the land.  The Supreme Court’s reasoning in  Bostock  can be ...