The proposed rule was published by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), who cited the Bostock v. Clayton County decision by the Supreme Court, which states that “sex-based discrimination includes discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”
“Accordingly, sex-based harassment includes harassment on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, including how that identity is expressed.”
Among the examples listed of these types of harassment were intentionally using a pronoun or name that is not consistent with the person’s gender identity, which is known as “misgendering”; denying them access to bathrooms consistent with their gender identity; or harassing them because they do not present in a way that is normally associated with their gender.
The EEOC went on to share an example of a scenario that would constitute harassment under the new law. It involved a cashier who identified as female whose supervisor and coworkers referred to her with her previous male name and used male pronouns to refer to her. When customers made threatening statements to her and misgendered her, she was reassigned to a non-customer-facing role. This, they maintain, is harassment based on gender identity.
However, federal courts have ruled on numerous occasions that employers cannot force their employees to endorse any speech they disagree with, and this is something that includes gender pronouns.
In one high-profile case, a philosophy professor at Shawnee State University won a case against the school after they tried to force him to refer to students using their preferred pronouns, including made-up terms like “ze.” An appeals court ruled that the university had burdened the professor's right to religious expression and free speech by making him use female pronouns when referring to a male student.
New rule would override requirements to accommodate religious beliefs
Under the proposed new rule, employers will be compelled to protect their employees from “religiously motivated harassment,” overriding the requirement in Title IV for employers to accommodate their workers’ “sincerely held religious beliefs, practices and observances in the absence of undue hardship.”
The proposed rule specifies: “Employers are not required to accommodate religious expression that creates, or reasonably threatens to create, a hostile work environment.”
In practice, this means that if a male worker requests a religious exemption to refer to a female employee using female pronouns despite that person’s desire to use a different pronoun, the employer must dismiss the request because it is considered harassment.
The new rule is in keeping with the insistence by the Biden administration that a person’s stated gender identity should override their biological sex, despite it being a scientific reality.
Unfortunately, this will only serve to exacerbate a broader trend in which people take advantage of this madness for dishonorable purposes. For example, we are increasingly seeing men claim that they identify as women solely so they can get access to private women’s areas such as locker rooms and bathrooms. There have been cases of incarcerated men who have been convicted of rape claiming to identify as women so they can be housed in women’s prisons, and men have also been claiming they identify as women so they can compete in women’s sports and use their physiology to their advantage.
The result of this rule, if it goes ahead, could be numerous small business owners being forced out of business for refusing to comply with this insanity. In short, transgender employees and those who claim to be transgender will have the power to shut down your business.
The proposal is now open for public comment.
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