Andrea Lucas Leads the EEOC: Restoring Agency With Truth and Commonsense
Andrea Lucas, chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), has been handed the enormous responsibility of restoring the agency and ensuring it carries out its statutory mandate.
The EEOC
The EEOC, once led by Clarence Thomas, is a bipartisan commission composed of five members who are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. By statute, no more than three commissioners can be members of the same political party.
The agency is at its best when it carries out its legal mandate to ensure all Americans are treated equally under law. The EEOC is responsible for enforcing the nation’s employment laws which protect job applicants and employees from being discriminated against because of their race, color, religion, sex, age or disability.
Created by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the agency’s mission and scope have been modified multiple times by subsequent pieces of legislation.
The Obama and Biden administrations, however, transformed the agency into a center of leftist ideological activism. Until now.
Chair Lucas Takes the Helm
Lucas was nominated to serve as an EEOC commissioner by President Donald J. Trump during his first term and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on September 22, 2020, just a few months before former President Joseph R. Biden took office.
“It was a long time in the wilderness as a commissioner during the Biden administration,” Chair Lucas said in an exclusive interview with the Daily Citizen. “I like to joke that I was in, but not of, the Biden administration,” she quipped, referencing John 17: 14-19.
After President Trump’s second inauguration, Lucas was re-nominated for a second term and confirmed by the Senate on July 31, 2025. On November 5, President Trump designated her as chair of the EEOC to lead a newly established Republican majority on the commission.
EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas. Photo courtesy of the EEOC.
For much of Lucas’ time on the EEOC, the agency was run by a Democrat-nominated majority of commissioners. But the EEOC’s ideological activism extends even further back than the Biden administration.
EEOC’s Ideological Activism
When Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it created Title VII specifically to protect individuals from employment discrimination on the basis of “sex” – being male or female. Specifically, it was enacted to protect women from discrimination. Not transgender-identified or homosexual-identified individuals.
In 2010, former President Barack Obama nominated LGBT activist Chai Feldblum to fill a vacancy on the five-person EEOC commission. Once asked about what should happen when religious liberty and “sexual liberty” conflict, Feldblum conceded, “I’m having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win.”
Commissioner Feldblum guided the EEOC on a course of using its own “guidance” letters and the court system to coerce and compel employers to redefine “sex” as “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” for purposes of Title VII. The EEOC went after employers for alleged discrimination against homosexual-identified and transgender-identified individuals.
As just one example, the EEOC sued Thomas Rost, owner of Harris Funeral Homes, a fifth generation family business, for firing a male employee named Anthony Stephens who refused to comply with the business’ sex-specific dress code after he began identifying as “transgender.”
The suit led to the Supreme Court’s Bostock decision in 2020, holding that Title VII prohibits employers from firing individuals for identifying as transgender or homosexual.
In effect, this undermined Congress’ legitimacy and ignored the original understanding of what “sex” means.
Under the Biden administration, it got worse. The EEOC attempted to essentially erase “sex” as a protected class altogether.
The Harassment Guidance
On April 29, 2024, the EEOC voted 3-2 to update its “Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace” (Harassment Guidance) which would have officially redefined “sex” in Title VII to include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.”
The radical guidance would have ended many workplace protections for millions of Americans, especially women, by:
- Ending sex-segregated spaces in workplaces by allowing transgender-identified employees to use whatever bathroom, locker room and shower they prefer.
- Mandating millions of Americans speak in false and anti-scientific terms by requiring employees to refer to their coworkers using their “preferred pronouns.”
- Specifying that intentionally and repeatedly “misgendering” or “deadnaming” a coworker creates a “hostile work environment.”
The guidance would have also made it more likely faith-based employers would be sued for not mandating “preferred pronoun” use or permitting males to access women’s spaces.
“The guidance made clear what the commission viewed as unlawful harassment,” Lucas told us, “And that increases the liability risk as a practical matter to every single employer, including faith-based employers.”
At the time, Commissioner Lucas courageously dissented from the agency’s decision.
“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,” Commissioner Lucas said after the guidance was released.
She added,
Lucas admitted that, while being in the minority on the commission under the Biden administration was difficult, “I think it’s really important to dissent and to have used my bully pulpit for good.”
“The Harassment Guidance was an unlawful document and overstepped our authority,” she told us. “Biology is not bigotry. There are two sexes.”
Thankfully, the updated Harassment Guidance was quickly challenged in court and never enforced.
On January 22, 2026, the EEOC voted 2-1 to rescind the updated Harassment Guidance with Commissioner Brittany Panuccio, a nominee of President Trump, joining Chair Lucas in voting for the rescission, and Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal, a nominee of former President Biden, dissenting. Two seats on the EEOC remain vacant.
No longer do Americans have to worry about their rights being attacked by the EEOC. With Chair Lucas at the helm, the EEOC is embarking on a much-needed course correction.
A New Day and New Priorities at the EEOC
Chair Lucas is proceeding with crucial priorities at the agency, protecting all people – including white males – from discrimination.
“Our doors are open for everyone,” Lucas said. “Our nation’s civil rights laws are race-neutral, sex-neutral and group-neutral under Title VII.”
“Despite that, in the last administration, and even for decades, there has been a strong presumption that the civil rights laws are only available for ‘minority workers’ or ‘historically underrepresented workers’ and not available to anybody who experiences race or sex discrimination,” she explained.
While the EEOC will continue to investigate discrimination that takes place against anyone, Lucas said, “It’s important for groups like white men who have been told that our doors are closed to them, to know that they’re not. We’re open. We’re going to take their concerns seriously.”
Lucas encouraged white men who believe they have experienced discrimination to reach out to the EEOC.
“We’re going to the defend the rights of everyone,” she said, “not just some favored groups.”
Lucas divulged the EEOC will crack down on any Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policy “whenever it involves race or sex discrimination.”
“To the extent any employment policy, whether it’s a DEI, Belonging, or Inclusion Policy, if it is functioning to engage in race or sex discrimination, that’s unlawful,” Lucas shared.
Chair Lucas also encouraged conservative individuals, who may be hesitant to request civil rights protections, to be open to contacting the EEOC.
“If your rights have been trampled on, whether its race or religious discrimination, you do have rights,” she said. “You can help protect yourself and others by exercising your rights. In an increasingly post-Christian world, it may be more imperative to be aware of what rights you have.”
A Personal Reflection
Before being nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by former President George H.W. Bush, Clarence Thomas served as the eighth chair of the EEOC for eight years.
Asked what it’s like to serve in his former position, Chair Lucas confessed with a grin, “It’s really cool.”
“He’s a personal hero of mine. He’s amazing, and that’s always a really special part of this job,” she added. “I’m constantly inspired by him. It’s an honor. I have big shoes to fill.”
Related articles and resources:
Eighteen States Sue EEOC Over Workplace Mandates Endangering Women and Free Speech
EEOC Releases Major Guidance Ending Many Workplace Protections for Women
‘Not Only Arrogant, But Wrong’: Justice Alito Slams SCOTUS Majority for Redefining ‘Sex’
The Justice Department Urges Supreme Court Not to Redefine Sex to Mean Gender Identity
Supreme Court Will Hear Redefinition of “Sex” Cases in October
Supreme Court Will Review Requests to Redefine the Word “Sex”
Chai Feldblum Exits EEOC — Why That’s Good for Religious Liberty
Photo from Shutterstock.
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