The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on Thursday voted 2-1 to approve a decision recognizing that federal agencies can designate intimate spaces, such as bathrooms and locker rooms, on the basis of sex, and not gender identity, the agency said in a Feb. 26 statement.
The decision was taken while assessing a discrimination appeal filed by a transgender-identifying federal employee, who argued that an agency’s policy to assign bathrooms based on sex rather than “gender identity” violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII is a federal employment law that bans employment discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, national origin, and color.
