A group of House Democrats is warning that the Treasury Department, under Secretary Scott Bessent, is on the verge of erasing key protections for LGBTQ+ federal workers — a move they say signals a broader assault on civil rights in the second Trump administration.
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In a letter sent Friday, Democratic Reps. Ritchie Torres of New York, Becca Balint of Vermont, Mark Takano of California, and others urged Bessent to reverse a proposal that would remove sexual orientation and gender identity as recognized bases for sex discrimination complaints on Treasury’s Equal Employment Opportunity forms. The lawmakers argue that the changes would confuse employees about their rights, obstruct reporting, and undermine decades of established legal precedent.
“Employees should not have to know EEOC or Supreme Court precedent to know that the discrimination they faced on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation is unlawful sex discrimination that can be reported,” they wrote.
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The letter comes amid a cascade of policy shifts stemming from President Donald Trump’s January executive order redefining sex as a strictly binary, biological trait. Titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” the order directs federal agencies to strip references to gender identity from regulations, records, and forms — and mandates that government documents only recognize “male” or “female.”
The Treasury’s previously established policy appears to be at odds with this pivot. A department-wide memo issued last September under former Secretary Janet Yellen explicitly prohibited discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, pledging “zero tolerance for all types of discrimination and harassment.”
Yet the pressure from the White House is unmistakable. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, under Acting Chair Andrea Lucas, has already removed references to nonbinary identities from its materials and signaled an enforcement strategy grounded in what it calls “biological and binary reality.”
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Torres, one of the House’s most prominent LGBTQ+ voices, told The Advocate it’s especially galling that Bessent, who is a gay billionaire, is leading this shift. “It’s deeply troubling to see someone who has benefited from civil rights protections turn around and try to strip them from others,” Torres said. “Secretary Bessent’s move to erase sexual orientation and gender identity from EEO forms signals to LGBTQ+ federal employees that their government may no longer stand with them. That is a betrayal.”
While the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County remains the law, safeguarding LGBTQ+ workers under Title VII, the clash between longstanding legal protections and a resurgent ideology of “biological truth” now threatens to redraw the boundaries of federal civil rights enforcement.
The Treasury Department did not respond to The Advocate’s request for comment.
