Labor Department Ends Transgender Workforce Training Shields (1)

The US Department of Labor is rescinding guidance that extended anti-discrimination protections to transgender participants in the agency’s workforce development programs.

The department argued that US Supreme Court precedent granting anti-bias rights to transgender workers don’t apply to programs governed by Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments, according to the notice to be published in the Federal Register on Thursday.

This is the Trump administration’s latest rollback of civil rights protections for transgender people. President Donald Trump directed the government to only recognize “two sexes” early into his second iterm.

The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act provides grants with the purpose of connecting job seekers with employers. The law stipulates that recipient schools and organizations must follow Title IX and no participant should be excluded, denied employment, or be denied benefits due to discrimination.

Under President Joe Biden, the DOL had taken the legal reasoning in the high court’s landmark Bostock v. Clayton County decision, a case under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and applied it to students in department-funded programs.

Courts have tackled whether Bostock applies to Title IX cases, with proponents arguing that judges have interpreted that law and Title VII interchangeably.

The Labor Department in its Wednesday filing pointed to rulings from the US Courts of Appeal for the Sixth and Eleventh circuits that said Bostock doesn’t apply to Title IX claims.

To extend the interpretation of Bostock to the WIOA program “would give it broader coverage than Title IX itself and exceed statutory authority,” the Labor Department said.

However, courts including the Fourth, Seventh and Ninth circuits have applied Bostock in the Title IX context.