WHITEWASH

Trump is perverting the mission of an agency founded to fight discrimination.

- DYLAN BRINGUEL

DYLAN BRINGUEL isn't sure what's worse: enduring what a federal agency identified as a “hostile work environment because of Bringuel’s transgender status” or that same agency abandoning them after committing to hold their employer accountable.

The first blow came in August 2022. Bringuel had just begun a housekeeping job at a Holiday Inn Express in Jamestown, New York. During the interview, Bringuel had been upfront about their gender identity and was told it wouldn't be an issue. But from the start, their manager made it one-calling Bringuel “it” and a “Transformer” and, in a conversation a coworker documented, blaming Bringuel for “what is wrong with society.” The day after reporting the harassment to supervisors, Bringuel was fired.

Bringuel was accustomed to such hostility, even from family members. So when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued the hotel's owner and operators on their behalf in September 2024, Bringuel was pleasantly surprised. “Somebody actually listened,” the now-29-year-old tells me through tears.

That feeling of being heard didn't last long. In February, shortly after President Donald Trump took office, the EEOC asked a judge to dismiss the harassment case it had initiated. To Bringuel, it seemed like the government was giving employers permission to openly discriminate against trans workers. “It makes me feel that at any point, somebody can just do something that hurts me physically, not just mentally or emotionally,” Bringuel says.

Bringuel wasn't alone. Citing Trump's day-one executive order against “gender ideology extremism,” the EEOC submitted motions to dismiss all seven of its active cases pertaining to trans and nonbinary people. Dismissing the cases “is discriminatory and directly violates the agency’s core mission,” warns an EEOC employee who asked to remain anonymous to avoid retaliation. “We're here trying to help people who have been discriminated against and disadvantaged.”