The Freedom From Religion Foundation is calling out the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for implementing the Trump administration’s “anti-Christian bias” narrative.
The EEOC has touted its religious liberty enforcement, highlighting more than $63 million recovered on behalf of workers in religious discrimination matters since January 2025 and a record $48 million in fiscal year 2025. While protecting employees from genuine religious discrimination is a legitimate function of the EEOC, Title VII protects workers of all or no religions, and requires reasonable accommodations for sincerely held religious practices when appropriate. But the EEOC’s own account makes clear that its current leadership is doing something more troubling: tying that legitimate mission to the administration’s political campaign against supposed widespread “anti-Christian bias.”
Revealingly, EEOC Chair Andrea R. Lucas also sits on President Trump’s Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias. The EEOC says it worked closely with the Justice Department on the task force’s April report alleging, absurdly, that the Biden administration engaged in anti-Christian discrimination throughout the federal government.
In March, the EEOC announced that a “leading global technology company” is paying $15 million to settle claims that it illegally refused to grant workers, described as “largely Christian,” medical and religious exemptions to Covid vaccine mandates. The EEOC has been in the news otherwise, too, with the New York Times recently suing over records requests. Among the documents requested was correspondence with groups such as the Heritage Foundation, America First Legal and Trump administration pooh-bah Stephen Miller.
The administration’s emphasis on Christianity is particularly inappropriate because federal civil rights law does not create a special category of protection for Christians. Religious protections apply equally regardless of whether an employee is Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, atheist or holds another religious or nonreligious viewpoint.
One particularly revealing case involves The Rock Snowpark, a Wisconsin ski area that the EEOC sued on behalf of a Christian employee. He was fired following a dispute over posts on his personal social media account, but the resort claims the decision was based on “performance issues and policy violations.”
Notably, the EEOC does not disclose the content of those posts. Instead, it describes them simply as containing “Bible verses and religious content” while its complaint acknowledges that the employer specifically raised concerns that some of the posts were discriminatory toward gay people. Without revealing the content at the center of the dispute, the EEOC portrays the case as an employer punishing a worker for expressing his Christian faith.
FFRF has repeatedly warned that the administration’s “anti-Christian bias” initiative turns the constitutional principle of religious freedom on its head. The First Amendment demands governmental neutrality toward religion. It does not authorize the federal government to elevate Christianity, treat Christians as a favored class or deploy federal agencies to reinforce a political narrative that Christianity is under siege.
The EEOC should remember that its obligation extends to the growing number of Americans, some three in 10, who are not religious. Title VII’s prohibition against religious discrimination protects atheists and other nonbelievers, including their right not to participate in religious practices or have religion imposed upon them in the workplace.
“Real religious freedom requires a government that neither favors nor disfavors religion,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “The moment an agency starts viewing its civil rights mission through the lens of combating ‘anti-Christian bias,’ equal protection becomes preferential treatment. The EEOC needs to be reminded it is not an arm of a White House campaign to falsely portray the nation’s dominant religion as uniquely persecuted.”
The EEOC needs to return its focus to what the law actually requires: protecting all workers from unlawful discrimination and enforcing religious accommodation requirements neutrally — rather than helping manufacture a privileged status for the majority faith.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 41,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
