The general counsel for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Sharon Gustafson, has been summarily fired by the Biden administration after she refused to resign in an openly defiant letter to the president.
The firing of the Trump-appointed attorney took place on Friday. The letter she sent to Biden was shared by Bloomberg Law, the first to report on the development. An email evidently shows that the Biden administration demanded on March 2nd that she step down immediately.
Gustafson politely refused to resign, stating that her term runs through 2023. She was then informed that as of 5 p.m. on Friday, she was terminated.
Gustafson is the first woman to serve as General Counsel to the EEOC. She stated that her termination was highly irregular and that a general counsel had never before been removed for “being appointed by the wrong political party.”
“Unless prevented from doing so, I intend to honor that commitment,” Gustafson stated.
Andrea R. Lucas is the Trump-appointed commissioner at the EEOC. She is beyond frustrated and upset over Gustafson’s firing. She wrote on Twitter that it was “an injection of partisanship where it had been absent[.]”
…telling evidence of what “unity” actually means to this President and his Administration. In his inaugural address, the President said, “The right to dissent peaceably, within the guardrails of our Republic, is perhaps our nation’s greatest strength.”
— Andrea R. Lucas (@andrealucasEEOC) March 5, 2021
“I have confidently given this advice to countless embattled clients over the last 25 years: hold your head high, do your best work, and do not resign under pressure,” Gustafson stated in her letter to the White House. “In solidarity with them, I will follow that advice.”
Biden also previously fired National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Peter Robb, another Trump appointee, after he refused to resign on Jan. 20.
That, however, does not seem to apply to Sharon Gustafson. And if such a principle does not apply to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission—the very agency charged with preventing and remedying discrimination and retaliation—where else does it apply?
— Andrea R. Lucas (@andrealucasEEOC) March 5, 2021
Bloomberg Law further surmised the situation: “The EEOC and NLRB are independent agencies within the executive branch, and Gustafson’s termination could prompt legal as well as political questions. After Biden sacked Robb at the NLRB, employers challenged the board’s prosecutorial power, alleging the administration lacked the legal authority to terminate him prior to the end of his term.”
The firings are a trend now for Biden, who also asked the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Director Kathy Kraninger to step down on Jan. 20.
The Biden administration allegedly did not tolerate Gustafson well due to her religious viewpoints. They seemed to believe she was anti-LGBTQ.
“One of the issues she made as her hallmark, was the issue of discrimination against religious minorities, the law requiring religious accommodation of beliefs,” former Obama EEOC general counsel David Lopez said to the Washington Post. “Some lawyers from the conservative Christian right view this right as a conflict with requiring nondiscrimination against LGBTQ people.”
Lopez said that he didn’t believe Biden firing Gustafson violated any tradition or policy. “At the end of the day you serve at the pleasure of the president,” Lopez stated. “I think the norm that was violated was that she decided to stay. I’ve never heard of that happening before.”
In her letter defying Biden’s request for her resignation, Gustafson noted that after the president was inaugurated, information pertaining to her efforts to promote religious freedom was removed from the EEOC website.
In the days leading up to the President’s decision to fire Ms. Gustafson, a report and related materials dealing with religious discrimination were removed from the EEOC’s website shortly after inauguration.
— Andrea R. Lucas (@andrealucasEEOC) March 5, 2021
“I can only assume that my resignation would be followed by similar suppression of our work promoting religious freedom,” she penned in her letter.
In the words of the Roman historian, Tacitus, “they have created a wasteland and call it peace.”
— Andrea R. Lucas (@andrealucasEEOC) March 5, 2021
“This is a pattern. President Biden calls for the end to ‘partisan warfare,’ only to turn around and demand that Senate-confirmed officials resign so he can make room for his left-wing friends,” claimed Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), who is the top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee.
“President Biden should take a note from General Counsel Gustafson, who stuck to her commitment and refused to cave to partisan pressure. This unprecedented firing of an honorable public official which occurred just hours after she was asked to resign is unwarranted and should be immediately rescinded,” Foxx demanded.
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