FreeState Justice, a legal-services nonprofit in Maryland, filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s failure to investigate anti-transgender job discrimination.

Under the Trump administration, the EEOC has abandoned trans workers, says the suit, in which FreeState Justice is represented by Democracy Forward and the National Women’s Law Center. It was filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland and names the EEOC and Acting Chair Andrea Lucas as defendants.

The EEOC, established in 1965 by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, is tasked with investigating all forms of workplace bias. Filing a discrimination complaint with the EEOC is a precondition to filing a federal employment discrimination lawsuit. “The EEOC, in turn, serves those charges on the employers, investigates the charges, resolves matters through conciliation or settlement where possible, and, in some circumstances, files lawsuits in federal court to vindicate the charging parties and advance the public interest,” the suit notes.

“But the EEOC has now abdicated this core duty,” it continues. “In derogation of its statutory and constitutional obligations, the EEOC has foreclosed transgenderworkers from the full set of Title VII-mandated charge-investigation and other enforcement protections that all other charging parties enjoy.” The suit calls current EEOC policy a “Trans Exclusion Policy.”

Soon after Donald Trump became president, the EEOC moved to dismiss the employment discrimination complaints it had brought on behalf of trans people, according to the suit. “The cases that the EEOC sought to abandon concerned transgender workers who had been subjected to egregious conditions in the workplace: slurs and grossly derogatory statements, graphic sexual comments and unwanted physical touching, misgendering, unfavorable shift changes, and termination after disclosing their gender identity — often in combination,” the complaint says.

In April, the commission “directed that all charges of gender-identity discrimination be categorically classified as meritless and suitable for dismissal,” it goes on. Now it claims “to accept for processing only certain kinds of charges brought by transgender charging parties—standalone hiring, firing, and promotion claims — but no others,” the suit says.

The EEOC has interpreted Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination as encompassing gender identity and sexual orientation discrimination since at least 2011, the complaint says. The U.S. Supreme Court interpreted Title VII that way in Bostock v. Clayton County in 2020. “In other words, Bostock cemented protections for LGBTQ+ workers that the EEOC had already recognized for years,” the suit notes. But now, in keeping with the Trump administration’s denial that trans people exist, Lucas is ignoring gender identity discrimination, the document continues.

Before the EEOC became anti-trans under the Trump administration, Freestate Justice “typically advised clients wishing to file employment-discrimination charges to file with the EEOC rather than the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights,” the suit says, as “the EEOC provides charging parties with more information and engages in more resolutions of matters” than the state body. Now FreeState Justice refers clients to the Maryland commission, whose “charge-investigation process is not an equal substitute for the EEOC’s,” according to the complaint.

The Maryland commission has a broader mission than the EEOC — it investigates charges of discrimination in housing, public accommodations, and other area, not just employment — and it may soon stop investigating gender identity discrimination because the EEOC will not reimburse it for this work.

The EEOC’s “Trans Exclusion Policy” violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the equal protection guarantee of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and the Administrative Procedure Act, the suit alleges. It asks for the court to order the EEOC to end this policy and award FreeState Justice costs, attorneys’ fees, and other appropriate compensation.

Related: Congress members demand that EEOC address gender identity discrimination

“Policies like the EEOC’s undermine the law and endanger people. They force LGBTQI+ people and other marginalized communities to choose between their job and being true to who they are,” Lauren Pruitt, legal Director at FreeState Justice, said in a press release. “These harms show up in the daily lives of the communities we serve through our legal work, who are being pushed further into the margins. We are fighting back because no one should have to live in fear of discrimination or retribution just to go to work.”

“For over 60 years, the EEOC’s mandate has been to protect workers from discrimination, not to pick and choose who is deemed worthy of protection based on political interference,” added Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward. “The Trump-Vance administration’s unlawful effort to erase protections for transgender people is cruel, and a violation of the law and the Constitution. We are honored to be alongside our partners and clients to hold this administration accountable and ensure every worker is protected under the law.”

“Instead of serving its critical role to prevent discrimination in the workplace, the EEOC, under Andrea Lucas’ leadership, is actually promoting discrimination,” said Gaylynn Burroughs, vice president for education and workplace justice at the National Women’s Law Center. “Transgender workers deserve to be protected against harassment, and the EEOC is obligated to do so under law. But the Trump administration seems hellbent on bullying transgender people in every possible way and ensuring that they are pushed out of all forms of public life, including their workplaces, so we’re taking the administration to court.”