(LifeSiteNews) — The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) late last month blasted proposed guidance from the Biden administration that would frame opposition to abortion and transgender ideology in the workplace as “sex-based harassment.” The bishops said there is “no legitimate interest” to “chill or forbid speech on these issues.”
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in late September released for public comment a draft of proposed guidance for dealing with “harassment in the workplace.”
Included in the new guidance is an expanded definition of sex-based harassment to include “harassment” based on “… a woman’s reproductive decisions, such as decisions about contraception or abortion.”
Moreover, “sex-based harassment” would include alleged harassment based on a person’s “sexual orientation and gender identity.” Such “harassment” could include “misgendering” transgender-identifying people by referring to them by their biologically accurate pronouns and birth name, according to the EEOC.
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The new guidance would not “have the force and effect of law” and isn’t “meant to bind the public in any way,” though it is “designed to provide clarity to the public regarding Commission policies and existing requirements under the law,” EEOC Chair Charlotte A. Burrows said.
The USCCB Office of the General Counsel responded to the Biden administration’s new proposal by warning in an October 27 letter that the new guidance would “chill or prohibit speech that upholds the sanctity of life, the nature of conjugal relationships, or the created, bodily reality of human beings,” something which, the bishops say, “is not supported by the text of Title VII and likely runs afoul of constitutional rights of speech, expressive association, and religious exercise.”
The bishops said they “recommend that the Commission revise the guidance to remove references to contraceptives and abortion” as well as “speech concerning gender identity and sexual orientation,” since “speech on these subjects (a) is not sex-based and (b) is constitutionally protected.”
Moreover, they pointed out, there is no nationwide rule under Title VII that would ban “references to individuals by their actual sex, critical speech on the subject of gender identity or sexual orientation, or single-sex restrooms and dressing areas.”
“Reading Title VII to chill or forbid speech on these issues is not only content-based but viewpoint-based because it prohibits speech on one side of the issue but not the other,” the letter read. “It therefore triggers the most exacting scrutiny, a standard that such a reading of Title VII is not likely to survive.”
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Continuing to blast the EEOC guidance, the bishops stated, “there is no legitimate interest, let alone a compelling one, in forbidding political and other speech on these issues on the basis of substantive content or viewpoint, nor is the guidance in this regard narrowly tailored to further any such interest.”
The EEOC is accepting public comments on its new guidance through Wednesday. Anyone interested in providing their comment can do so by following the link here.
Catholic bishops in the U.S. have come out forcefully in recent months to defend Catholic teaching on the reality of biological sex, the dignity of the human person, and the sanctity of life.
The USCCB published an instruction forbidding so-called “gender transition” surgeries and drugs in March.
In late August, the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland formally banned participation in radical LGBT ideology for all of its elementary and high schools, prohibiting “pride” flags, preferred pronouns, participation in social or surgical gender “transitions,” and more.
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of the Archdiocese of San Francisco and Bishop Michael Barber of Oakland in September published a letter declaring that the pervasive ideology that asserts that people can be born in the wrong body or switch genders is “radically opposed to a sound understanding of human nature.”