Following the groundbreaking U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ruling protecting transgender people under the Title VII sex discrimination law, we now know that the EEOC will take seriously and work to resolve claims of anti-trans discrimination. To help individuals understand and assert their rights in the workplace, the National Center for Transgender Equality is releasing Know Your Rights: Employment Discrimination and Transgender People, a new resource outlining the laws protecting trans people in the workplace and steps for reporting job discrimination. The resource details how individuals can file a complaint with the EEOC, as well as through a state or local civil rights agency or their union.
The EEOC’s ruling is a tremendous victory but despite its broad coverage it does not eliminate the need for clear workplace laws that explicitly include gender identity and expression. Harper Jean Tobin, NCTE Policy Counsel, said “Our friends at the Transgender Law Center did incredible work to facilitate the EEOC ruling, which provides real protections, right now. But we’ll continue to work with TLC and other advocates to advance laws that send a definitive message to businesses and workers that transgender and gender nonconforming people are protected on the job.”
Mara Keisling, NCTE Executive Director, said the ruling was “a major step forward that we need to build on,” and added, “Nine in every ten transgender people still face harassment at work, which only emphasizes the need for laws like the Employment Non-Discrimination Act to make sure our rights aren’t left up to interpretation.”
We’ve already gotten lot of questions about the EEOC ruling and what it means for transgender people and for our advocacy work. For answers to questions not covered in NCTE’s resource, we recommend the Transgender Law Center’s: Frequently Asked Questions: What the EEOC’s Decision in Macy v. Holder Means for You.
In addition, we want to remind everyone of our other “Know Your Rights” resources that outline existing protections and how to file discrimination complaints in the following areas:
- Fair Housing and Transgender People
- Health Care Rights and Transgender People
- Transgender Federal Employees: Know Your Workplace Rights
- Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Students: Your Rights at School (coming soon)
Download the resource here.
National Center for Transgender Equality's Blog 
This is a truly excellent resource, and I’m going to direct my listeners to it as well as your other guides.
If I may play editor/proofreader for one moment though: The first sentence of the text under “What Laws Protect You” is “The following laws offer protection for transgender people in housing:” Housing? I suspect you probably meant employment.
Anyway, great job on this. I wish I’d had access to something like it when I was going through a couple of workplace bias situations. Let’s all make an effort to make this information known to as many trans Americans as possible.
Yikes! Thanks for catching that typo, Rebecca. The document has been corrected. Thanks, Vincent.
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