Are we getting a mixed message from the new administration on priorities in the civil rights area?
In her first public comments since her appointment as the new acting chair of the EEOC, Victoria Lipnic just last week (February 8) said that the agency will not be making major changes and “is committed to its core values and mission, to enforce civil rights laws in the workplace.”
Yet – just a few days later on Sunday, February 11, The New York Times reported that the new administration has decided not to appeal a nationwide injunction issued by a judge in Texas to block Department of Education guidelines which stated that schools had to give transgender students access to facilities according to their chosen gender, as a matter of law. It is not clear now whether this signals that the Trump administration’s position on transgender rights, a significant initiative of the EEOC in the Obama administration, will change and what position the new DOJ will take in the Grimm v. Gloucester County case, now pending before the US Supreme Court.
One is a statement from one agency and the other is a decision by another, but clearly there is going to be a shift of focus and priorities.