A coalition of state attorneys general have written a letter addressed to President Joe Biden and his administration calling out two of its recently enacted policies under the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the U.S. Department of Education that the attorneys claim “threaten to impose unlawful regulatory guidance upon nearly every employer and educational facility in our states and throughout the country.”
The letter was led by Tennessee Attorney General & Reporter Herbert H. Slatery III and signed by 20 other attorney generals from states such as Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Kentucky, Ohio, Louisiana, Mississippi, and more.
According to Christian Headlines, the 21 attorneys are accusing the Biden administration of doing more than what is required to enact the Supreme Court’s Bostock v. Clayton County decision. Judges ruled in the 2020 decision to ban discrimination in employment based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
The EEOC recently released new guidelines on how workplaces should implement the Bostock decision, while the DOE issued a Notice of Interpretation on how the Bostock decision will affect schools across the country.
Furthermore, the 21 attorneys argue that the Biden administration’s EEOC guidance “appears to ignore” two out of the three “protections provided to religious employers,” which are Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which “express statutory exception for religious organizations” and the First Amendment’s protections of “the employment relationship between a religious institution and its ministers.” The Supreme Court’s decision on Bostock dictates that it is “a statutory decision and cannot overrule the First Amendment’s guarantees of religious liberty,” the letter said.
