By Lauren Weber
As head of the federal agency that fights workplace discrimination, Andrea Lucas has said two men in particular have shaped her sense of mission.
One is her father, an industrial salesman who she has said was once fired after speaking up about his faith on the job. The other is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who led the agency -- the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission -- from 1982 to 1990.
As President Trump's appointed EEOC chair, Lucas is sharply shifting the agency's focus to give priority to allegations of religious discrimination. It is bringing lawsuits on behalf of a truck driver who asked to wear a skirt on the job because of her Apostolic Christian beliefs and a ski-area employee fired after writing faith-related social-media posts. And it recently settled with a staffing agency that didn't hire a Muslim job applicant after he asked for an accommodation to attend Friday prayer.
The 39-year-old Christian conservative has opened investigations into law firms' diversity practices and universities' handling of antisemitism. The EEOC asked a judge this week to enforce a subpoena against the University of Pennsylvania. Lucas has said she is attacking the identity politics she believes has permeated workplaces and the broader culture.
"Laying siege to the institutions and taking them back is the big-picture theme," Lucas told the Daily Caller, a conservative news outlet, this summer. By targeting elite institutions, she said in the interview, "You change the culture."
Now she has the power to do more. During the government shutdown, the Senate confirmed a Trump nominee, Brittany Panuccio, as an EEOC commissioner. That gives Lucas a quorum -- a minimum of three commissioners out of the full slate of five -- after Trump fired two Democrats in January. One Democratic commissioner remains.
With the agency's full powers, Lucas can make good on promises to rescind guidance regarding protections for transgender and nonbinary workers and root out what the Trump administration views as unlawful diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Most notably, she will be able to sue employers on significant legal questions, potentially setting the stage for new precedents on civil-rights law.
"Andrea is very pro-enforcement," said Victoria Lipnic, who served as the EEOC's acting chair during the first Trump administration. "The traditional trope of Republican administrations is that they'll be hands-off about enforcement. That's not her at all."
Lucas declined to comment. An agency spokesperson said Lucas "has emphasized a broad reset of agency priorities to be consistent with the President's agenda, Supreme Court precedent, and our country's founding principles of equality and individual rights."
While racial and sexual discrimination still make up a large share of claims that American workers file with the agency, Lucas has chosen to call attention to religious-discrimination allegations, which make up a small portion of claims.
"In some cases, it's been a direct 180," Christopher DeGroff, a partner who represents employers at the law firm Seyfarth Shaw, said of the EEOC's shift in focus since the Biden administration.
To date, the EEOC has recovered more than $55 million for workers affected by Covid vaccine mandates, many of whom refused to get the vaccine for religious reasons. Lucas recently called the mandates "one of the greatest civil-rights violations in the last few decades." It also secured a $21 million settlement from Columbia University as part of the Trump administration's push against antisemitism at academic institutions -- the agency's largest public settlement in nearly two decades.
This spring, senior agency officials asked EEOC attorneys around the country to identify discrimination claims in line with White House priorities, according to an email viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Those include discrimination resulting from employer DEI programs, along with antisemitism and anti-Christian or anti-American bias in workplaces.
The EEOC filed 94 lawsuits in fiscal 2025, which ended Sept. 30, one of the lowest tallies in decades. One reason for the decrease, DeGroff said, is it takes time for regional offices to identify claims in line with the new priorities and with enough merit to file a federal complaint.
Former colleagues describe Lucas as outspoken, dedicated and smart. "She has a really strong legal mind and was among the brightest associates I worked with over the years," said Jason Schwartz, who as a leader of the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher's labor and employment team oversaw Lucas's work early in her career.
In her first EEOC commission term, which began in 2020, Lucas established a reputation as an independent thinker. She voted with the two Democrats to approve a lawsuit accusing a McDonald's franchisee of discriminating against Black job applicants, according to the EEOC's press release on the case. Her votes with Democrats regularly denied victories to the commission's other two Republicans early in the Biden presidency, when Republicans held a majority of the commissioner seats.
Lucas has taken a more strident tone from the start of Trump's term, excoriating the Biden administration for what she has called "woke policies" and supporting the firing of her two Democratic colleagues on the commission. She hired Connor Clegg, a former digital-media strategist for the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk, to join her communications team.
In a June hearing to confirm Lucas for a second term, she said she erred in 2021 when she wrote on social media that the EEOC was an independent agency. Instead, she told senators, the agency answers to the White House.
Hundreds of EEOC employees have retired early, accepted buyouts or left for other jobs since the start of Trump's term, said current and former employees. Those moves have left the agency understaffed and morale low, they said.
The agency's shift on protections for transgender workers has been a particular source of confusion -- and anger -- among some staffers. The agency suspended work on discrimination claims related to gender identity early this year, a move Lucas said adhered to Trump's executive order to "defend biological reality."
EEOC officials later told agency workers that they could investigate a small subset and that Lucas's office would review investigations if staff determined discrimination likely took place, according to an email reviewed by the Journal.
Write to Lauren Weber at Lauren.Weber@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 19, 2025 22:00 ET (03:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Comments