A transgender employee of the National Security Agency is suing the Trump administration and seeking to block enforcement of a presidential executive order and other policies the employee says violate federal civil rights law.
Sarah O'Neill, an NSA data scientist who is transgender, is challenging President Donald Trump’s Inauguration Day executive order that required the federal government, in all operations and printed materials, to recognize only two “immutable” sexes: male and female.
According to the lawsuit filed Monday in a U.S. District Court in Maryland, Trump's order “declares that it is the policy of the United States government to deny Ms. O’Neill’s very existence.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The order, which reflected Trump's 2024 campaign rhetoric, spurred policies that O'Neill is challenging, as well.
Since Trump initial executive action, O'Neill asserts the NSA has cancelled its policy recognizing her transgender identity and “right to a workplace free of unlawful harassment,” while “prohibiting her from identifying her pronouns as female in written communications" and “barring her from using the women’s restroom at work.”
O'Neill contends those policies and the orders behind them create a hostile work environment and violate Section VII of the Civil Rights Act. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that Section VII's prohibition on discrimination based on sex applied to gender identity.
“We agree that homosexuality and transgender status are distinct concepts from sex,” the court’s majority opinion stated. “But, as we’ve seen, discrimination based on homosexuality or transgender status necessarily entails discrimination based on sex; the first cannot happen without the second.”
O'Neill's lawsuit argued, “The Executive Order rejects the existence of gender identity altogether, let alone the possibility that someone’s gender identity can differ from their sex, which it characterizes as ‘gender ideology.’”
In addition to restoring her workplace rights and protections, O'Neill is seeking financial damages.
Trump's order was among a flurry of executive actions he took hours after taking office. He has continued using executive action aggressively in his second presidency, prompting many legal challenges that are still working their way through the federal judiciary.
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