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Marc Seawright, a queer trans man, says he faced workplace discrimination at the federal agency that is supposed to fight it.<\/span>Mother Jones; Jeff Chiu\/AP<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Equal Employment<\/span> Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was established by the 1964 Civil Rights Act to enforce anti-discrimination laws in workplaces across the country. But under the Trump administration, the federal agency tasked with helping workers who experienced hostile work environments became a hostile work environment itself, according to one judge\u2019s recent ruling.<\/p>\n EEOC Director of Information Governance and Strategy Marc Seawright was \u201cforced to resign because EEOC leadership engaged in discrimination against transgender employees, including the claimant,\u201d Mary Shea, an administrative judge for the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, wrote in a ruling<\/a> this month, determining Seawright had \u201cgood cause\u201d to resign in June. As a result, Seawright is eligible for unemployment benefits while his formal discrimination complaint remains under review by the EEOC. <\/p>\n \u201cBeing forced to create the information technology that would systematically erase all EEOC references to transgender, non-binary, or other LGBTQ+ people, given that I am a queer transgender man, was personally devastating\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Before his resignation<\/a>, the information technology specialist had spent the last eight years working on projects that enabled the EEOC to carry out its core mission: preventing and fighting workplace discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy status, disability, and genetic information. Among Seawright\u2019s proudest contributions was an app he developed that enabled colleagues to display their pronouns across agency systems. Seawright, who identifies as a queer trans man, has also served as an employee-elected board leader of the agency\u2019s LGBTQ+ employee resource group; that is, until the Trump administration\u2019s newly appointed EEOC chair, Andrea Lucas, disbanded it in January.<\/p>\n The same month, EEOC staff were instructed that any recognition of transgender and non-binary people needed to be \u201csystematically erased\u201d in both the EEOC\u2019s internal and external materials, Seawright explained in a formal complaint <\/a>against the agency in March, before his resignation.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat made it more disturbing,\u201d he wrote, \u201cwas my forced involvement in making it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n Specifically, Seawright was instructed that he<\/em> had to develop a technological process for the EEOC to scan and censor \u201cany mention of transgender, non-binary, or sexual orientation\u201d from agency materials. <\/p>\n \u201cBeing forced to create the information technology that would systematically erase all EEOC references to transgender, non-binary, or other LGBTQ+ people, given that I am a queer transgender man, was personally devastating and contributed to a hostile work environment,\u201d he said in his complaint. <\/p>\n Seawright\u2019s complaint is not only about what he was instructed to do at work, but also about what he was prevented from doing amid the EEOC\u2019s efforts to \u201cmarginalize me and my role.\u201d Among other things, he says he was booted from network systems he needed to do his job and left off meeting invitations about initiatives he was supposed to be leading.<\/p>\n \u201cThe conditions of my employment have continued to deteriorate and I expect they will become worse as Acting Chair Lucas takes further steps to discriminate against transgender employees,\u201d his complaint said.<\/p>\n\n