EEOC votes to rescind sweeping 2024 harassment guidance, sparking legal uncertainty

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission voted 2-1 on Jan. 22, 2026 to rescind its April 2024 “Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace,” a 200-page document that had broadened the agency’s interpretation of unlawful workplace harassment and included more than 75 example scenarios for employers. The repeal removes the guidance in its entirety, a move civil-rights advocates say will have immediate consequences for LGBTQ+ workers and for employees who experience harassment tied to sex, gender, race or ethnicity.

The 2024 guidance had consolidated earlier EEOC materials and sought to apply modern workplace realities, including digital harassment and the aftereffects of the #MeToo movement, to longstanding federal law. It explicitly built on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, invoking Bostock’s language that “an employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex.” The guidance extended that reasoning to harassment and a range of workplace scenarios.

The guidance immediately prompted litigation. The State of Texas and the Heritage Foundation sued, and in May 2025 the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas granted summary judgment to the plaintiffs, ruling that portions of the guidance were “final agency action” producing legal consequences and exceeded the EEOC’s statutory authority. The court found that certain provisions improperly expanded the scope of “sex” and criticized the agency for treating failures to accommodate transgender employees’ bathroom, pronoun and dress preferences as discriminatory harassment. In response, the EEOC had annotated its online guidance in May 2025 to reflect vacated portions related to gender identity.

Political and administrative shifts hastened the repeal. President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20, 2025 Executive Order 14168 directed agencies to limit recognition of gender identity in federal policy. On Jan. 28, 2025, EEOC Acting Chair Andrea R. Lucas moved to roll back large portions of Biden-era technical assistance, arguing the guidance “protected LGBTQ+ people at the expense of women” and that “Women’s sex‑based rights in the workplace are under attack, and from the EEOC, the very federal agency charged with protecting women from sexual harassment and sex‑based discrimination at work.” The commission lacked a quorum for months and could not act formally until a full complement of commissioners was restored with the confirmation of Brittany Bull Panuccio in October 2025.

The procedural path to rescission drew scrutiny. On Dec. 29, 2025 the EEOC asked the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs to cancel the guidance and, according to advocacy observers, submitted the rescission as a final rule rather than a proposed rule, a move that avoids notice-and-comment and is uncommon for guidance rescissions.

Advocacy groups and former agency officials criticized the repeal. The National Women’s Law Center said the move was “yet another example of the EEOC straying from its core mission … leaving workers without the protections they deserve,” and the Human Rights Campaign warned the decision would “destabilize our understanding of civil rights protections, for communities across the board.” A group of former EEOC officials argued the rescission was part of a broader effort to weaken enforcement, and legal analysts cautioned the action will make harassment claims by LGBTQ+ workers “more difficult, timely and costly” to pursue.

Economically, the repeal increases compliance uncertainty for employers operating across states and could raise legal and human-resources costs as firms reassess internal policies and anticipated exposure to claims. The move also underscores a broader trend of oscillating federal enforcement tied to partisan shifts and administrative procedure, leaving businesses and workers to navigate a fragmented federal landscape until courts, Congress or a future commission provide clearer direction.