U.S. Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and James Lankford (R-Okla.) have sent a letter to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra, calling for the retraction of new guidance that they argue limits federal employees’ freedom of speech and faith-based practices while compromising workplace safety for women.
The letter from Senators Cruz and Lankford, along with Senators Jim Risch (R-Idaho), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), and Steve Daines (R-Mont.), expresses deep concerns about the “Gender Identity Non-Discrimination and Inclusion Policy for Employees and Applicants” issued by HHS.
The policy mandates that employees use others’ preferred pronouns or face disciplinary action, even without legal proof of a name change or medical documentation.
The letter also questions the provision allowing anyone to access gender-specific spaces, arguing that this approach risks employee safety and forces women to share facilities with individuals of the opposite biological sex. The senators criticized the inclusion of lactation rooms in the guidance as part of an alleged “radical agenda.”
“We write out of deep concern over Guidance you issued entitled ‘Gender Identity Non-Discrimination and Inclusion Policy for Employees and Applicants.’… According to the Guidance, failure to use the preferred names and pronouns an individual asks to be addressed with ‘contribute[s] to an unlawful hostile work environment.’ Notably, your Guidance states that the Department cannot ‘require a legal change of name or gender marker, medical certification, or other documentation.’ In other words, anyone can change their names and pronouns and compel coworkers to use that name or pronoun, or face disciplinary action.
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“Perhaps more egregious than the Guidance’s position on compelled speech related to pronoun usage is the policy on bathroom, locker room, and lactation room usage. According to the Guidance, HHS will ‘ensure there are no barriers to equally accessing restrooms, locker rooms, lactation rooms, or other personal care spaces.’… Including lactation rooms in this same Guidance is blatantly offensive—males cannot breastfeed their children, and claiming to be female does not change that reality. The only reason for including this in the Guidance is to continue to push a radical agenda in every facet of the federal workplace.”
The senators are pressing HHS for answers on how religious accommodations are provided under the policy and have asked for data on how the agency will handle concerns over privacy, costs, and training hours spent implementing the guidance. They requested a detailed response by October 30 to address specific questions about employee exemptions and measures protecting faith-based objections.
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