We speak with Karla Gilbride, the former general counsel of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, who was fired by President Trump in late January along with two commissioners at the federal agency that enforces civil rights law in the workplace. The EEOC was created as part of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and is tasked with investigating discrimination based on race, ethnicity, sex and other characteristics, but the Trump administration is gutting the agency as part of its larger assault on DEI, or diversity, equity and inclusion. The EEOC says it will no longer focus on anti-trans discrimination and vows to uphold a binary view of sex and gender.
TRANSCRIPT
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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
We end today’s show with the former top lawyer at the EEOC, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. She was fired last week as part of the Trump administration’s purge of federal workers and broad attack on diversity, equity and inclusion policies in the workplace.
In a press release from the new EEOC leadership, titled, quote, “Removing Gender Ideology and Restoring the EEOC’s Role of Protecting Women in the Workplace,” the acting EEOC chair Andrea Lucas says she’ll prioritize compliance and litigation to, quote, “defend the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights, including women’s rights to single-sex spaces at work,” unquote.
For more, we’re joined by Karla Gilbride. She is now the former general counsel of the EEOC, after she and two EEOC commissioners were fired last week in the late-night purge. In 2022, Gilbride became the first blind lawyer to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court. She’s now the new deputy director of Public Citizen Litigation Group.
Welcome to Democracy Now! Why were you fired? Talk about you and the commissioners. Is this even legal?
KARLA GILBRIDE: Hi, Amy. It’s great to be here.
So, I was fired last week as general counsel of the EEOC. That’s the position that heads the litigation program. As you mentioned, two of the four commissioners, two who were appointed by President Biden, were also fired. And that is unprecedented. There have never been commissioners fired before the end of their term. And this is not the only agency where Trump has done this in recent weeks.
And the EEOC was established as part of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to ensure equal opportunity in the workplace based on — make sure people are not discriminated on based on race, based on sex, based on disability, age, national origin or religion. And I am concerned that President Trump removing commissioners will imperil that mission.
I’m also concerned, based on the press release that you just read, that, you know, one of the parts of the EEOC’s mission and the litigation program that I worked on as general counsel involved enforcing the 2020 Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which recognized discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity as forms of sex discrimination. And the binary of sex that doesn’t recognize, you know, that people — the reality, the lived reality and the medical reality, that people have gender identities that do not match their sex assigned at birth, and that if someone is discriminated against because they’re transgender, because they’re nonbinary, or certainly because of their sexual orientation — which is not mentioned in that press release — those are protected traits under Supreme Court precedent and under Title VII. And the EEOC needs to be able to vigorously enforce that law as passed by Congress and as enforced by the Supreme Court.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Karla Gilbride, I’m wondering — you mentioned that this kind of sledgehammer approach is not just at the EEOC but throughout the federal government in the last few weeks. It reminds me that Mussolini, the founder of modern fascism, declared that fascism was, in essence — he called it corporatism, a merger of state and corporate power. And we’re seeing this merger occurring right here now as more and more billionaires and businesspeople are taking over the functions of government. I’m wondering your sense of what this means to the view of the state as sort of a mediator of the conflicts within society now to have this government so rapidly taken over by businesspeople.
KARLA GILBRIDE: I am concerned about not only the many actions that the president has taken to exceed his powers under the Constitution, but also the influence of private, unelected representatives of corporations, like Elon Musk, most notably, through his role with this shadowy Department of Government Efficiency, which is involved in lots of different agencies.
In my new role after leaving the EEOC, I’ve moved on to Public Citizen, which recently filed suit against the Treasury Department, because, at the orders of the Department of Government Efficiency, lots of private information of federal workers, of retirees, of anyone who does business and has financial information stored with the Treasury Department is now in the hands and access has been given over to unknown and unaccountable individuals who are affiliated with Elon Musk, who are affiliated with DOGE, which is not a government department, and the individuals, you know, working with Mr. Musk have not gone through the vetting that individuals would normally have to go through in order to have access to that sensitive private information. And so, Public Citizen filed suit to seek an injunction to seek a stop to this turnover of private information, which there should be government safeguards to protect, but in this unprecedented sort of mixture of private and public authority through involving oligarchs at the highest levels of our government who are unelected, that needs to be stopped. And we hope that the courts will step in to put an end to this unprecedented mixture of private and public power and abuse of executive authority.
AMY GOODMAN: Karla Gilbride, before we end, can you describe what happened last week when you and two EEOC commissioners were fired? What happened? What time was it?
KARLA GILBRIDE: So, I received the email at around 10:30 p.m. telling me that — you know, again, citing the sort of unbounded authority that the president has to have people that agree with him ideologically serving in his administration, that my services were no longer required. And the email also referred to, again, this concept of gender ideology, this idea that the president wanted to be able to enforce the sex binary, even though, as I mentioned, that’s contrary to Supreme Court precedent. And there was also a reference in the email to diversity, equity and inclusion, which, as I’m sure your listeners are aware, has just become sort of a bogeyman and a concept that is being used to tar all sorts of efforts, including the efforts of the EEOC to enforce the civil rights laws, which is what I was doing as general counsel, was overseeing litigation to enforce civil rights laws that have been on the books for, you know, 30, in some cases 60, years.
AMY GOODMAN: Karla Gilbride, we want to thank you for being with us, just fired by Trump as general counsel of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
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