In a hearing with the U.S. Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Trump’s nominees to the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission declined to endorse that entity’s current interpretation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act as extending to sexual orientation and gender identity.
The nominees – former Burlington Stores general counsel Janet Dhillon and Iraq veteran Daniel Gade – told senators said that they personally oppose such discrimination but that the law is still in question, and that it is important that the federal government speaks with a unified voice.
Dhillon said: “We now have a split in the circuits and two agencies that have taken differing views of the same text.” The EEOC currently has 1 Republican and three Democrat commissioners.
It’s unusual for the EEOC majority to not be of the same party as the presidential administration.