Trump Appoints Andrew Rogers as Acting Head Lawyer at EEOC (1)

President Donald Trump named Andrew Rogers acting general counsel of the EEOC, filling a key post that will help the new administration move forward more aggressively on its agenda at the civil rights agency.

Amid agency leadership upheaval, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced on Tuesday the former chief counsel to recently-appointed Acting EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas, has been tapped for the role.

He’ll replace former top EEOC attorney Karla Gilbride, who had been nominated for the position by former President Joe Biden. Trump fired Gilbride last week along with two of the EEOC’s three Democratic commissioners.

Trump’s pick of a Lucas EEOC staffer signals that the agency’s litigation arm will be in sync with the Republican acting agency chair’s priorities. Lucas laid out an EEOC agenda that overhauls gender identity protections and targets diversity, equity, and inclusion programs that the administration deems discriminatory, citing recent Trump executive orders on DEI.

The lack of quorum resulting from commissioner firings limits the agency from moving ahead on much of Lucas’s plan through policy changes and litigation, though it has begun reviewing transgender bias charges filed by workers.

“I am honored to be selected by the President to serve at the Commission, and to advance robust, high-quality, efficient, and transparent enforcement of our nation’s civil rights laws via the agency’s litigation program,” Rogers said in a statement.

Prior to his work on the commission Rogers worked in the US Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division. He was was a labor and employment attorney at Littler Mendelson PC and Paul Hastings LLP earlier in his career.

The general counsel position must be Senate confirmed, meaning Rogers or another Trump appointee would need to go through that process before being put in place for a four-year term.

The general counsel is responsible for managing and coordinating the EEOC’s litigation program. Since many cases can be subject to a vote by the commission, Rogers’ power as acting general counsel has limits.

The EEOC revised its litigation delegation rules in 2020 to require a commission vote for cases where the panel had taken a position contrary to precedent in the circuit where the case would be filed, or where the general counsel was proposing to take a contrary position. It also established a process of consultation between the EEOC chair and the commission’s top lawyer to determine if there should be a vote.

A further modification in 2021 added a five-day review period by the commission for all cases and allows a majority of commissioners to ask for a vote.

Until at least one more commissioner is confirmed to create a quorum of three on the panel, Lucas and Rogers may be barred under the revised litigation delegation from filing any cases that would seek to change the precedent of how discrimination laws like Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act have been interpreted.