Dozens of transgender federal workers have lost their jobs since President Trump took office, and several say the firings came right after their gender identity became known at work.
Quick Take
- President Trump signed an order on his first day back in office saying the government will only recognize two sexes, male and female.
- Transgender employees at agencies like Health and Human Services, the CIA, and the National Security Agency say they were fired or pushed out soon after.
- The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) itself fired a judge who called the policy “unethical.”
- A new rule called Schedule Policy/Career makes it easier to remove federal workers in policy roles who don’t follow White House directives.
- Federal law still lists transgender status as a protected class under sex discrimination rules, creating a legal fight over what counts as lawful firing.
An Executive Order Sets the Tone
President Trump signed an executive order on January 20, 2025, titled “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing.” The order told agencies to shut down diversity offices and declared the federal government would recognize only two sexes, male and female. Within weeks, agency heads were told to place employees tied to diversity programs on leave and start terminations.
Amy Paris felt the impact firsthand. She spent more than a decade working across five presidential administrations, most recently overseeing organ donation safety standards at the Department of Health and Human Services. She said she was told she was fired for performance, but believes she has clear evidence the real reason was her transgender identity.
Stories Reach Beyond One Agency
A former White House staffer known as Julia told The Atlantic she was fired without explanation less than 70 days into the administration. She later worked at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) but said she felt unsupported in an administration described as openly hostile to transgender people, and eventually left the job she once considered a dream.
Sarah O’Neill, a data scientist at the National Security Agency (NSA) who is transgender, sued the Trump administration over the same executive order. Her lawsuit argues the order’s requirement that agencies recognize only two “immutable” sexes conflicts with existing protections for transgender workers across the federal government.
The Watchdog Agency Turns on Its Own
Jocelyn Samuels led the EEOC, the very agency responsible for enforcing workplace discrimination law, when she received notice just seven days after the inauguration that President Trump wanted her removed. She later said the administration was pushing a “demonization of the term DEI” that ignored the discrimination protections her agency was built to enforce.
Inside that same agency, Administrative Judge Karen Ortiz called Trump’s gender order “unethical” and pushed back against the acting chair for following it. The EEOC fired her in June 2025. The move drew attention because it came from the exact agency tasked with deciding whether firings like Paris’s amount to illegal discrimination.
A New Rule Widens the Door
In June 2026, President Trump signed an order moving about 8,000 career federal positions into a new classification called Schedule Policy/Career. Employees in these jobs don’t have to personally support the president, but they must carry out administration policy or face dismissal. The White House says removals under the rule ignore political affiliation and only target poor performance, misconduct, or failure to follow presidential directives.
That framing sits next to a legal reality that hasn’t changed. The EEOC’s own guidance states that sex discrimination under federal law includes transgender status, and federal workers get 45 days to file a complaint after an adverse action. Whether firings tied to the new order count as lawful personnel decisions or unlawful discrimination is now the central legal question facing courts and the EEOC itself.
For workers like Paris, Julia, and O’Neill, the dispute isn’t abstract. Each built careers inside agencies meant to serve every American, only to say their government service ended not because of their work, but because of who they are. Their cases now sit at the center of a bigger fight over how much power a president has to reshape the federal workforce around his own definitions.
Sources:
theatlantic.com, 19thnews.org, washingtonpost.com, influencewatch.org, theguardian.com, en.wikipedia.org, pbs.org, walkinshaw.house.gov