This move mandates that companies must allow their employees to use restrooms that correspond with their chosen gender identity and refrain from “misgendering” their workers. It has already ignited a fiery backlash against the Biden administration’s mission to use federal power to force progressive gender ideology on the public.

In late April, the EEOC’s updated guidelines expanded the definition of workplace discrimination to include transgender individuals.

Under the updated federal guidance, employers who misgender employees (i.e., refer to them with a pronoun inconsistent with their known gender identity) or deny them access to restrooms based on their gender identity are liable for sex-based workplace harassment.

The guidelines state that they’re “not binding on the public in any way.” But that disclaimer is “worth little,” says Commissioner Andrea Lucas, one of the two dissenters who voted against adopting them. Employers now know where the enforcement agency stands, and they’re going to do what it takes to avoid liability.

That means working women will be sharing the ladies’ room with men, putting them at risk for exactly the kind of sexual harassment (or worse) Title VII was meant to protect them from. The implications of this change were so problematic EEOC Commissioner Andrea Lucas, who was one of two people dissenting from the new guidelines, warned that “Women’s sex-based rights in the workplace are under attack” and said that the commission “ignores biological reality; dismisses the sex-based privacy and safety needs of women; disregards decades of safeguarding principles for women and girls; and fundamentally betrays its mission.”

EEOC Chair Charlotte Burrows argued that the new guidelines “are a necessary update to reflect modern understandings of gender identity and workplace discrimination.”

Proponents of the new rules cite the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County as justification for the decision. The ruling held that employers who terminate employees “simply for being … transgender” violate Title VII’s prohibition on discrimination. However, critics pointed out that the court’s decision only applies when it comes to firing an employee and does not require employers to buy into gender ideology.

Several state attorneys general pointed out how the EEOC is misapplying the Bostock ruling, noting that the decision “doesn’t license the EEOC to require allowing male workers into female co-workers’ bathrooms” in a letter arguing against the new guidelines.

Those supporting the measure contend that it is necessary to protect transgender workers from harassment and discrimination. They point to instances in which transgender individuals face significant obstacles in the workplace.

However, this goes far beyond ensuring that transgender people are not being harassed or discriminated against. This is about forcing regular folks to kowtow to far leftist ideas about gender even if they do not agree with them. This development is part of a larger movement to compel Americans to pretend that men can become women and vice versa.

The authoritarian left has realized they cannot persuade the nation to believe in their twisted ideas on gender. So they plan to weaponize the state as leverage against those they cannot convince. Unfortunately, the new guidelines represent a substantial shift in the landscape of workplace rights and gender identity, and since Democrats are in charge of the White House, they have the upper hand at the moment.