President Donald Trump appointed Andrew Rogers as the acting general counsel of the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. 

The EEOC is the federal agency authorized to investigate and litigate against businesses and other private-sector employers for violations of federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination, including sexual harassment. For public-sector employers, the EEOC shares jurisdiction with the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division; the EEOC is responsible for investigating charges against state and local government employers before referring them to the DOJ for potential litigation. The EEOC also is responsible for coordinating the federal government’s employment antidiscrimination effort.

Rogers served as chief counsel to current EEOC Acting Chair Andrea Lucas since October 2020, during her prior tenure as commissioner and her tenure as acting chair to date. In this role, he participated in all aspects of the EEOC’s work including regulations, subregulatory guidance, amicus filings, federal sector matters, commissioner’s charges, subpoena determinations and litigation.

Prior to his time on the commission, Rogers served in the Wage and Hour Division of the US Department of Labor, where he focused primarily on regulations and opinion letters. Before that, he practiced labor and employment law at Littler Mendelson PC and Paul Hastings LLP. Earlier in his career, he clerked for then-Chief Judge Harvey Bartle III of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Roger replaces former top EEOC attorney Karla Gilbride, who had been nominated for the position by former President Joe Biden, Bloomberg Law reported. Trump previously fired Gilbride along with Charlotte Burrows and Jocelyn Samuels, two of the EEOC’s three Democratic commissioners.

“Andrew is a brilliant lawyer, a strategic thinker, and a trusted advisor,” Lucas said. “He has deep and broad employment law experience between his government service with me at the EEOC and with former EEOC Commissioner Keith Sonderling at the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division as well as his time in private practice. I look forward to partnering with Andrew in his new role to continue the important work of the agency.”

The selection of a Lucas EEOC staffer signals that the agency’s litigation arm will be in sync with the Republican acting agency chair’s priorities. According to Bloomberg Law, Lucas laid out an EEOC agenda that overhauls gender identity protections and targets DE&I programs that the administration deems discriminatory, citing recent Trump executive orders on DE&I.

Lack of Quorum Stalls Plans

The lack of quorum resulting from the recent removal of EEOC commissioners limits the agency from moving ahead on much of Lucas’ plan through policy changes and litigation until another commissioner is appointed and confirmed.

However, Lucas has set forth policies she was implementing within her power as acting chair that reflect the president’s Executive Order 14168, Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government. According to a blog post by law firm Jackson Lewis, these include:

• Announcing the priority to “defend the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights, including women’s rights to single-sex spaces at work.”
• Removing the agency’s “pronoun app.”
• Ending the use of the “X” gender marker and “Mx.” prefix for the charge intake process.
• Removal of materials promoting “gender ideology” on the commission’s internal and external websites and documents.

“We also expect there to be a greater focus and increase in EEOC-initiated litigation on issues Acting Chair Lucas has championed in the past and in her policy statement, such as alleged illegal DEI policies that make race- and sex-conscious hiring decisions, pregnancy discrimination, and religious discrimination and accommodation issues,” the post states.