As Alphonse Karr famously said, "The more things change, the more they are the same” EEOC’s 2024 Guidance Rescinded in January of 2026

As of this week, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) officially rescinded on January 22, 2026, everything the previous administration’s EEOC attempted to accomplish. Such is a time-honored tradition amongst administrative agencies, especially the EEOC, the Department of Labor (“DOL”), and the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”).

Bound for the proverbial shredder today we have the EEOC’s 2024 April Guidance Memorandum (the “Guidance”) interpreting Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This Biden era Guidance contained over seventy real-world examples of unlawful misconduct covering a broad range of topics, including race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, and genetic information based harassment and discrimination. 

But let’s be honest here, the current Administration’s EEOC isn’t concerned with any of that; instead, they seem to be very focused on eliminating protections for people who identify as transgender.  Per EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas, the Guidance characterizing gender identity-based harassment and discrimination as violating Title VII “ignored biological reality,” and provided “unlawful accommodations” for pronoun usage and access to single-sex facilities. 

This EEOC Guidance rescission strikes us as somewhat performative as the U.S. Supreme Court held that Title VII’s protections against discrimination or harassment “because of sex” extend to members of the LGBT community. Specifically, the Court held that Title VII prohibited discrimination or harassment against an individual because they were gay or transgender because sex necessarily plays a role in this type of such an employment decision. See Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. 644 (2020).  https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/pdf/17-1618.pdf

So, what does the EEOC’s recission of the Biden Guidance actually accomplish? Not much as Title VII is still the law which means gender identity is protected by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 2020, Bostock v. Clayton County whether the EEOC has guidance on the issue or not.  Gender/Sex based EEOC and FCHR Charges will still be filed and investigated, and suits will still be filed requiring employers to defend themselves against such claims.