A Texas federal judge struck down the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s transgender employee protection policy on Thursday, stating the policy contradicts the plain text of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas said that Congress is the entity that can add amendments to the US Constitution and that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) cannot. He referenced the conclusion of the US Supreme Court in Bostock v. Clayton County, stating that the court “expressly refused to redefine ‘sex’ under Title VII” in that decision.

He summarized his conclusion by emphasizing: “[T]he absence of any reference to ‘gender identity’ or ‘sexual orientation’ in Title VII’s definition of ‘sex’ and Congress’s failure to include any specific accommodation for ‘gender identity’ and ‘sexual orientation’ further demonstrate that requiring such accommodations contravenes Title VII’s plain text.”

Judge Kacsmaryk instituted a limited vacatur of the 2024 enforcement guidance, only invalidating the gender identity portion of the guidance. He reasoned that the gender identity portion was the only challenged portion of the guidance and that it was easily severable because the guidance was divided into parts and based on precedent from the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He also held that the policy was vacated universally, not just to the plaintiffs, because of Fifth Circuit precedent.

The policy has been up for debate since 2021, when the EEOC passed a guidance document called “Protections Against Employment Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity.” The document indicated that discriminating against someone based on their sexual orientation or gender identity constitutes “sex” discrimination and is therefore a violation of Title VII. The guidance then listed examples of scenarios that relate to gender identity discrimination that would lead to the creation of a potentially hostile workplace. These examples included denying transgender people access to the bathroom of the gender they identify with, prohibiting them from changing in the same space as the gender they identify with, and repeatedly calling them the wrong pronouns.

Texas challenged the guidance, and this same court found that the guidance was final agency action and vacated it as unlawful in October 2022. The EEOC did not appeal.

More recently, the EEOC unveiled its 2024 enforcement guidance, which reexplained what is covered by sex discrimination. Discriminating against certain sexual orientations and gender identities was one portion of the guidance, and it included the same scenarios as the 2021 guidance for what constitutes a Title VII violation. Texas and the Heritage Foundation then challenged this guidance in October 2024 and moved for summary judgment.