President Appoints Andrea R. Lucas EEOC Acting Chair

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) today announced that President Donald J. Trump has named Commissioner Andrea R. Lucas Acting Chair of the EEOC. Lucas has served as an EEOC Commissioner since 2020, having been nominated by President Trump during his first term.

“I am honored to be chosen by President Trump to lead the EEOC, our nation’s premier civil rights agency enforcing federal employment antidiscrimination laws,” Lucas said. “I look forward to restoring evenhanded enforcement of employment civil rights laws for all Americans. In recent years, this agency has remained silent in the face of multiple forms of widespread, overt discrimination. Consistent with the President’s Executive Orders and priorities, my priorities will include rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination; protecting American workers from anti-American national origin discrimination; defending the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights, including women’s rights to single‑sex spaces at work; protecting workers from religious bias and harassment, including antisemitism; and remedying other areas of recent under-enforcement.”

During her tenure on the Commission, Lucas has written and spoken frequently about challenging and emerging issues in employment and civil rights law to educate workers about their rights, help employers comply with their responsibilities, and correct common misunderstandings about the law.

“Our employment civil rights laws are a matter of individual rights. We must reject the twin lies of identity politics: that justice is measured by group outcomes and that civil rights exist solely to remedy harms against certain groups,” Lucas said. “I intend to dispel the notion that only the ‘right sort of’ charging party is welcome through our doors and to reinforce instead the fundamental belief enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and our civil rights laws—that all people are ‘created equal.’ I am committed to ensuring equal justice under the law and to focusing on equal opportunity, merit, and colorblind equality.”

Before her appointment to the EEOC, Lucas practiced labor and employment law for an international law firm in Washington, D.C. Earlier in her career, she clerked on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. More information about Lucas is available at https://www.eeoc.gov/andrea-r-lucas-acting-chair.

The EEOC is the sole federal agency authorized to investigate and litigate against private companies and other private employers for violations of federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination. For public employers, the EEOC shares jurisdiction with the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division; the EEOC is responsible for investigating public sector charges before referring them to DOJ for potential litigation. The EEOC also is responsible for coordinating the federal government’s employment antidiscrimination effort. More information about the EEOC is available at www.eeoc.gov. Stay connected with the latest EEOC news by subscribing to our email updates.