Trump Taps Republican Commissioner Andrea Lucas to Lead EEOC (1)

Andrea Lucas has been named acting chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by President Donald Trump shortly after his inauguration, putting a Republican who has questioned corporate DEI’s legality and opposed certain workplace gender identity protections at the helm of the agency.

Lucas’s priorities will include “rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination” and “defending the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights,” she said in a Tuesday statement.

“Our employment civil rights laws are a matter of individual rights. We must reject the twin lies of identity politics: that justice is measured by group outcomes and that civil rights exist solely to remedy harms against certain groups,” she said.

Lucas’s priorities laid out in her statement are consistent with the agenda Trump signaled in a series of executive orders signed late Monday, including a widespread overhaul of transgender protections and diversity and inclusion programs across the federal government.

Lucas initially will be limited as acting chair in her ability to push through any partisan policies or suits based on conservative interpretations of federal workplace discrimination law due to the Democratic voting majority on the commission.

The EEOC’s staggered terms give Democrats control of the five-member panel until 2026, when Jocelyn Samuels’ term is set to expire and she can be replaced with a Republican. That tilt with Lucas at the helm will give Republicans on the panel wide berth to shape civil rights law enforcement.

Lucas takes over the leadership role from Commissioner Charlotte Burrows, a Democrat, who served as chair throughout the Biden administration.

DEI Perspective

During her time at the EEOC, Lucas has raised concerns over corporate DEI programs — telling companies to exercise caution around their use since they may run the risk of being unlawful.

Her warnings follow an uptick in anti-DEI activity, from social media activists and groups like America First Legal, run by Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller. The organization has submitted numerous requests to the commission to investigate corporations for discrimination over their DEI programs.

Lucas also voted against two key policies approved by the EEOC’s Democrats during the Biden administration: final rules under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and workplace harassment guidance.

The pregnancy bias law requires employers to make accommodations for workers who are pregnant or have related medical conditions. The final rules included requirements for employers to accommodate workers who choose to have or not have an abortion.

Lucas said in a statement at the time she voted against the rules because they purport “to broaden the statute in ways that, in my view, cannot reasonably be reconciled with the text.”

Several GOPstate-led lawsuits are targeting the PWFA over similar accusations that the agency went beyond its authority in setting the rules.

The harassment guidance includes protections for LGBTQ+ workers, including requirements that employers allow workers to use the bathrooms and facilities that fit the gender with which they identify. In a statement at the time, Lucas said “biological sex is real, and it matters” and that “women will suffer the consequences” of the EEOC’s guidance.

One of Trump’s orders calls for the EEOC to rescind the guidance. Lucas signaled she would likely heed that order in her opening message, calling to defend “women’s rights to single-sex spaces at work.”

A former Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher lawyer in Washington, Lucas was nominated by Trump during his first administration and confirmed to her seat in September 2020. Her term is set to expire in July.

Lucas is currently the only Republican on the commission. Another Republican seat, vacated by Keith Sonderling in July 2024, is also open.

Sonderling was nominated by Trump to serve as deputy labor secretary in his new administration.