The Senate will vote On Wednesday, Kalpana Kotagal, whom President Joe Biden nominated to serve on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in response to what critics say will impose transgender considerations on employers across America.
“I am deeply concerned about Kalpana Kotagal’s record of supporting transgender ideas,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said. The Daily Signal in the words of Wednesday. “The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was created to fight discrimination and discrimination in the workplace, but the rising Left is trying to use the EEOC to push its employers, and based on Kotagal’s history I think he will use his position to attack religious freedom and impose his politics on Texas companies.”
“There is no problem if the Senate confirms Kalpana Kotagal as a member of the EEOC,” Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, said on Twitter. “His appointment would turn the EEOC into a dangerous Commission with devastating consequences for our businesses and our communities.” (The Daily Signal is an article of The Heritage Foundation.)
“Kotagal, if confirmed, could turn the EEOC into a spearhead of conservatives,” Reed Rubenstein, chief executive officer of America First Legal, told The Daily Signal in a statement Wednesday.
“Many large corporations promote gender stereotypes and punish employees who disagree,” Rubenstein argued. “But it seems likely that the EEOC will focus on small and private businesses, many of which do not have the resources to effectively deal with them.”
He called on House Republicans to use “budgetary and oversight tools to reduce EEOC fraud” and for conservative lawyers to use the Freedom of Information Act “to investigate and prosecute to protect against EEOC actions.”
The EEOC is responsible for enforcing federal laws that prohibit discrimination against a job applicant or employee based on characteristics such as race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, or genetics.
The current EEOC consists of four out of five commissioners, with a fifth vacant. Two of the commissioners are Republican appointees and veterans President Donald Trump (Keith Sonderling and Andrea Lucas), and two Democrats nominated by Biden (Chair Charlotte Burrows and Vice Chair Jocelyn Samuels). Kotagal’s confirmation gives Democrats a majority and removes a check on the committee’s advocacy on transgender issues.
History of Kotagal
Kotagal specializes in labor laws and “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” He teamed up with Stacy Smith, a professor of art at the University of Southern California, and director of film production at Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni to create a template for a “combined rider,” a part of an actor’s or filmmaker’s partnership that requires diversity between creative and production professionals.
The high-profile merger templates – available at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, a Kotagal law firm – require the company to review its operations, its practices in digital and offline projects, and more to promote the Left’s definition of “diversity.” The constitution seeks to support “underrepresented groups” defined as follows:
The term “underrepresented” refers to people identified as women
All cultures and identities, people who identify as Black, Native American, Asian American & Pacific Islander, or other non-Black, Puerto Rican or Latino people
Aboriginal people, people with disabilities, Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender or Queer (“LGBTQ+”) people, people over 40, people from religious minorities, or people with
including these information or preferences.
The rider also requires the company to adopt “gender-neutral spaces” and provide “space approval.”
More especially on transgender attitudesit requires the company to keep real data – given to “PROFESSIONALS” – to calculate the number of people participating in the project who “identify as” transgender.
In 2021, Kotagal represented the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund at against Aetna forcing the company to perform “breast augmentation” surgeries on men who identified as women. Aetna has agreed to change its policies to consider “breast augmentation” surgeries instead of cosmetic procedures for policyholders who identify as transgender.
Kotagal did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment by press time.
EEOC’s transgender advocacy
If the Senate can confirm Kotagal, it could advance the committee’s announcement for transgender ideaspush to impose a proposal on US employers.
The The EEOC defined discrimination on the basis of sex—outlawed in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964—including sex and gender identity, even though Congress would not have passed the statute with such a definition in 1964. The EEOC challenged its declaration because of this interpretation, which the Supreme Court ultimately accepted. in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020).
Yet the EEOC’s advocacy of transgenderism goes beyond the interpretation of state law.
Internal documents obtained by The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project show that the EEOC’s studies show a biased model of the “genderbread person,” which separates “gender identity” from “gender expression” and “sex assigned at birth.”
Critics argue that adopting the term involves accepting an ideology that implies that sexuality is a natural human construct, rather than a central human condition that enables humans to reproduce. Transgender Perspectives It involves showing “gender identity” as a successful act, so changing one’s body to match a gender different from one’s gender is also interpreted as “affirmation,” not destruction.
The EEOC’s user profile requires employees to choose from a long list of pronouns, including not only the plural “they/them/their” but also unusual pronouns such as “xe/hir/hirs,” “ze/zir/zirs,” and “yo /yo/yos.”
The EEOC also appears to have pressured Microsoft to add the designation to “all Microsoft 265 platforms, including Outlook and Groups.”
In March 2022, the EEOC released a “voice register” promoting “mutual respect in the workplace,” meaning that men and women use different words that prioritize a person’s identity over natural sex. Along with “transgender” and “cisgender” (terms for someone who identifies with their sexuality), the EEOC has recognized “non-binary,” “genderqueer,” “genderfluid,” and “Two-Spirit.” The EEOC does not appear to have adopted a policy of banning different types of “gender information.”
Will the Senate confirm him?
It is unclear whether the Senate will vote to confirm Kotagal. When the senators who meeting with the Democrats have a majority (51) over Republicans (49), many vulnerable Democrats could oppose his nomination. Sens. Joe Manchin, DW.Va., Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., and Jon Tester, D-Mont., at press time.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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