A Message from EEOC Chair Charlotte A. Burrows for 2024 Transgender Day of Remembrance
Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance, a somber observance to honor the lives lost to anti‑transgender violence in the past year, support their loved ones, and recommit ourselves to promoting safety and inclusion for transgender individuals in all aspects of their lives.
This year is a particularly poignant observance because it marks 25 years since the first Transgender Day of Remembrance on November 20, 1999. Among the tragic events that motivated the first observance were the murders of two Black transgender women, Chanelle Pickett and Rita Hester, in the greater Boston area in November 1995 and November 1998, respectively. One of the brave activists who started Transgender Day of Remembrance and founded the “Remembering Our Dead Project” observed that by the time of Hester’s murder in 1998, Pickett’s murder only three years earlier was already fading from memory.
Today, we remember and honor the lives of the transgender people in the United States and around the world who were murdered in the last year. Their murders are a painful reminder of our individual and collective responsibility to stand against all forms of violence and hatred at all times.
At the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), we enforce a federal law that makes it illegal to discriminate against job applicants or employees for being transgender. This legal protection was confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) and has been applied in the lower courts countless times since then.
If you or someone you know has experienced discrimination at work or in the job application process because they are transgender—or for any other legally prohibited reason—please visit the EEOC’s webpage about How to File a Charge of Employment Discrimination and note the time limits for filing a charge.
Together, as we mourn the lives lost to anti-transgender violence, we must continue America’s commitment to building safe and inclusive workplaces where everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed.
Charlotte A. Burrows (she/her/hers)
Chair
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
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