Two of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s three Democratic commissioners said on Tuesday that they had been removed from their roles by President Trump in a round of late-night firings that could mark a drastic shift in the government’s approach to workers’ rights in employment discrimination disputes.
Charlotte A. Burrows and Jocelyn Samuels both said that they had been removed from their jobs late on Monday night. Their ousters may leave the agency without a quorum that would allow it to take formal actions.
The E.E.O.C’s general counsel, Karla Gilbride, was also fired on Monday night, she said in a phone interview. Kalpana Kotagal, the third Democratic commissioner, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Ms. Kotagal’s term expires in July 2027.
Their removals come during a whirlwind of actions since Mr. Trump was sworn into office on Jan. 20, with many aimed at diversity, equity and inclusion policies in the workplace, which Mr. Trump and his supporters have labeled “woke policies.”
Mr. Trump also fired the general counsel and one of the commissioners of the National Labor Relations Board on Monday, also effectively hobbling that body.
For Ms. Burrows, who had been appointed to the commission by former President Barack Obama, the firing came three years before the end of her term. Ms. Samuels said her term did not end until July 2026. Both had been confirmed by the Senate, which left open the question of whether Mr. Trump was stretching the limits of his authority.
The E.E.O.C. helps workers who believe they have been discriminated against to bring an action against their employers. The N.L.R.B.’s mandate is to enforce private-sector employees’ rights to unionize and take collective action.
Last week, Mr. Trump tapped Andrea Lucas, a commissioner he appointed in October 2020, to serve as acting chair of the E.E.O.C. In a statement last week, Ms. Lucas said that she looked “forward to restoring evenhanded enforcement of employment civil rights laws for all Americans.”
She said that her priorities would include “rooting out unlawful D.E.I.-motivated race and sex discrimination,” among other initiatives.
Ms. Lucas declined to comment and referred all media inquiries to Victor Chen of the E.E.O.C.’s media team. Mr. Chen said all inquiries regarding the commission were being referred to the White House.
A White House spokeswoman did not immediately return a request for comment.
The firings leave the E.E.O.C. with just two commissioners, including the acting chair.
Ms. Burrows was appointed to the E.E.O.C. in 2015 and worked as the chair of the commission from January 2021 until the appointment of Ms. Lucas. Her term was set to expire in 2028. According to the E.E.O.C. website, Ms. Burrows focused on enforcement of civil rights laws. She started initiatives on artificial intelligence and recruitment practices to expand diversity and inclusion.
In a statement, Ms. Burrows, who has retained a lawyer, called her removal unprecedented and said that she would “explore all legal options available to me.”
“Removing me, along with Commissioner Samuels, well before the expiration of our terms is unprecedented and will undermine the efforts of this independent agency to do the important work of protecting employees from discrimination, supporting employers’ compliance efforts, and expanding public awareness and understanding of federal employment laws,” she said in the statement.
Ms. Samuels said in a statement that her removal violated the law and “represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the E.E.O.C. as an independent agency.”
“These removals leave the E.E.O.C. without a quorum, which hobbles the agency’s ability to protect workers from unlawful discrimination,” Ms. Samuels said.
Ms. Samuels started at the commission in 2020 and had been confirmed for a second term that would end in 2026. She previously worked at the UCLA School of Law and as the director of the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.
The two fired commissioners, along with Ms. Kotagal, posted a statement on X taking issue with Mr. Trump’s decision on Jan. 21 to rescind a historic executive order issued by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 that barred workplace discrimination by federal contractors.
Shortly after Mr. Trump was inaugurated, the Justice Department asked a federal judge to cancel oral arguments in a case challenging an E.E.O.C. guidance about workplace gender identity. Government lawyers said the facts in dispute had changed based on Mr. Trump’s executive order that said the federal government only recognizes two sexes, which would alter the agency’s guidance.
The judge, according to a notation on the docket, agreed to cancel the scheduled argument “given the obvious significance of the executive order to this litigation.”
