Under Attack But Not Defeated

Part I: The Dismantling of Federal Infrastructure

The Strategy

The administration has not repealed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which would require Congressional action. Instead, it has achieved a similar result by systematically eliminating the mechanisms that make Title VII enforceable. Title VII is enforced by the EEOC and through private litigation, but effective enforcement depends on a broader infrastructure: guidance that clarifies legal standards, data that reveals discrimination patterns, legal doctrines that capture how discrimination actually operates, and state agencies that extend enforcement capacity. The administration has weakened Title VII enforcement and deprioritized those most impacted by discrimination. It has attacked guidance and liability theories workers and their attorneys rely on to identify, prove, and win discrimination cases.
The administration has also attacked Title VII from the outside in. Through a series of executive orders, it banned diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across the federal government and among federally funded contractors, dismantling the very initiatives that put Title VII’s nondiscrimination mandates into practice.^[1] It ended federal recognition of nonbinary gender identities and workplace equity initiatives, including those required by federal law, as “gender ideology.”^[2] It has unlawfully terminated or moved to withhold billions in federal funding from gender justice and community organizations that help workers understand and exercise their civil rights.^[3] The reach has been sweeping: the National Institutes of Health terminated a grant studying domestic violence against pregnant women because it was categorized as a “DEI” study,^[4] the Department of Education cut more than $600 million in grants to institutions and nonprofits,^[5] and federal courts have had to intervene to block the defunding of LGBTQ-serving health organizations.

These actions do not amend Title VII. They do not need to. They eliminate the programs, partnerships, and institutional commitments that translated the law into workplace reality.

The Enforcement Infrastructure 

Workplace civil rights protections depend on a layered enforcement system. The EEOC investigates discrimination charges, issues guidance, and brings systemic case under Title VII and other federal anti-discrimination laws. The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) proactively monitors federal contractors for discrimination and pay equity. The disparate impact doctrine allows workers to challenge facially neutral policies that disproportionately exclude women and people of color. EEO-1 data collection requires large employers to report workforce demographics, helping to identify patterns of possible discrimination. And state civil rights agencies handle local enforcement, often with federal funding. Each layer has been attacked.

The Six-Pronged Attack on Title VII’s Enforcement Infrastructure

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act remains the law. But a law without enforcement is just words on paper. Without the infrastructure to identify, investigate, and remedy systemic discrimination, these rights become much harder to exercise. The Trump administration is systematically dismantling the agencies, guidance, data systems, and legal doctrines that give Title VII meaning, while leaving the statute itself untouched. This makes the rollback less visible but no less devastating.

1. Crippling the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

UNPRECEDENTED: For the first time in the EEOC’s 60-year history, a president fired commissioners mid-term,^[6] violating Title VII’s express provisions requiring a bipartisan commission insulated from political interference.

• January 2025: Trump replaced EEOC Chair Charlotte A. Burrows with Andrea Lucas, as an acting Chair, who said in a Congressional hearing that she’d make the EEOC an arm of the executive branch, despite the agency’s bipartisan stated purpose and history.^[7]
• Late January 2025: Trump fired Commissioners Burrows and Samuels, leaving the agency without a quorum.
• Without a quorum, the EEOC cannot bring systemic discrimination cases, cases challenging legal precedent, or cases involving novel legal questions.
• Under Lucas, at least seven lawsuits on behalf of transgender workers have been dismissed,^[8] staff have been directed to deprioritize all gender identity claims, and technical assistance documents have been removed from the website.
• Lucas sent intimidating letters to 20 law firms demanding information about diversity, equity, and inclusion programs without legal authority.^[9]
• July 2025: Senate confirmed Lucas to a second term as commissioner in a 52-45 vote,^[10] despite her record of politicizing the agency.
• October, 2025: The Senate confirmed Brittany Panuccio as a third commissioner, restoring the EEOC’s quorum and establishing a Republican majority. Trump then elevated Lucas from Acting Chair to Chair in November, empowering the agency to formally rescind guidance and regulations.^[11]

With a Republican majority now in place, the EEOC has the votes needed to further weaken Title VII and other workplace civil rights laws.

2. Rescinding Workplace Harassment Guidance

JANUARY 22, 2026: The EEOC rescinded the 2024 Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace at its January 22 meeting,^[12] eliminating critical instructions without taking public comment.

• The EEOC has issued harassment guidance since to help employers understand and comply with anti-harassment laws. This was the first time the EEOC had issued guidance in 25 years, capturing the evolving law in that time, including new protections for LGBTQ employees. This guidance has helped employers understand their legal obligations to prevent and address workplace harassment. Without it, employers lose clear standards and workers lose the information they need to hold them accountable..
• Women have relied on this guidance to hold employers accountable for workplace harassment.
• Stripping away harassment guidance opens the door to more rampant harassment, eliminates employer incentives to address complaints, and forces workers out of the workforce when they have no avenue for recourse.
• Research from the Center for Employment Equity at the University of Massachusetts shows that 64% of workers who file harassment claims lose their jobs and 68% experience employer retaliation.^[13]

3. The Federal Government Abandons Its Disparate Impact Enforcement

ON THE BOOKS BUT NOT ENFORCED: When a workplace policy doesn’t mention gender but still screens out women, that’s disparate impact. A height requirement that excludes most women from police work. A physical test designed around male bodies. The policy doesn’t say “no women” because it doesn’t have to. The effect does the work.

Disparate impact is the doctrine that opened police and fire departments to women by challenging unnecessary physical requirements. ERA itself used this doctrine to successfully challenge Greyhound’s exclusion of qualified women bus drivers through minimum height and weight requirements.^[14] Without it, employers can hide discrimination behind policies that appear neutral on paper.

Disparate impact liability is codified in statute (Civil Rights Act of 1991) and established by Supreme Court precedent (Griggs v. Duke Power, 1971).^[15] It cannot be eliminated by executive order.

But without disparate impact enforcement, employers can embed discrimination into facially neutral rules and never be held accountable. That is exactly the outcome this administration is pursuing:

• April 2025: Executive order instructs agencies to stop enforcing disparate impact claims.^[16]
• June 2025: The EEOC moved to dismiss EEOC v. Sheetz, its only pending Title VII disparate impact case.^[17]

4. Eliminating Proactive Enforcement by OFCCP

60 YEARS REVERSED: Executive Order 11246, in place since 1965 under both Democratic and Republican presidents, required companies with federal contracts to take affirmative steps to ensure equal employment opportunity. It was revoked January 21, 2025.^[18]

The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) doesn’t enforce Title VII directly, but it was a critical complement to it. While Title VII requires workers to file individual complaints, OFCCP proactively audited federal contractors to identify discrimination. OFCCP conducted compliance reviews, identified patterns of pay discrimination, and ensured taxpayer dollars did not fund workplace discrimination.

• January 24, 2025: Acting Secretary of Labor ordered OFCCP to immediately stop all investigations and enforcement.^[19]
• April 2025: 90% of OFCCP workforce placed on administrative leave, effectively shuttering the agency.^[20]
• Over the past 10 years, OFCCP won over $260 million for 250,900+ workers who faced discrimination by federal contractors.^[21]
• One-fifth of American workers are employed by federal contractors. They still have Title VII rights, but the agency that held their employers accountable without waiting for individual complaints is gone.

5. Suppressing Workforce Data

YOU CAN’T FIX WHAT YOU CAN’T SEE: By eliminating workforce data, the administration is erasing the evidence that discrimination exists.

EEO-1 Data: The Foundation of Pattern-Based Enforcement

The EEO-1 report is a mandatory annual data collection requiring private employers with 100 or more employees, and federal contractors meeting certain thresholds, to submit workforce demographic data to the EEOC, including the race, ethnicity, and sex of employees by job category. This data allows the EEOC to identify patterns of discrimination that individual workers might never see, such as when a company consistently promotes men over equally qualified women, or when certain job categories are segregated by race. Without this data, systemic discrimination becomes invisible.

• April 2025: The EEOC announced plans to eliminate nonbinary reporting in the EEO-1 data collection system. ^[8]
• September 2025: The EEOC announced it will dissolve the Office of Enterprise Data and Analytics, the office that administers EEO-1 reports and supports systemic litigation.^[22]
• Project 2025 proposed eliminating EEO-1 data collection entirely, and the current federal authorization for the collection expires in November, 2026. Without this data, patterns of discrimination become invisible.^[23]
• Other EEOC data collections, including reports on state and local government workforces (EEO-4) and public school employees (EEO-5), have already been delayed.

If EEO-1 data collection ends, the EEOC loses its primary tool for proactively identifying patterns of discrimination across employers. Workers can still obtain company data through litigation, but only after they’ve already filed a case and have the resources to pursue discovery. Discrimination that workers don’t know about—like company-wide pay gaps or promotion disparities—becomes far less likely to be detected or challenged indefinitely.^[24]

The Women’s Bureau: 105 Years of Data on Working Women

• May 2025: The Trump administration’s FY2026 budget proposed eliminating the Women’s Bureau, the only federal agency dedicated to collecting and analyzing data on women in the workforce. The budget described this 105-year-old agency as “an ineffective policy office that is a relic of the past.”^[25]
• Two-thirds of the Bureau’s staff have already left through early retirements and resignations, and the administration terminated all WANTO grants supporting women entering apprenticeships and nontraditional occupations.^[26]

The Women’s Bureau maintains the most comprehensive federal database of childcare prices by county, reports on state paid leave programs, and tracks occupational segregation that concentrates women in lower-paying jobs. This research has informed landmark legislation including the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Equal Pay Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and the Family and Medical Leave Act. Eliminating the Bureau means eliminating the only federal agency mandated to collect data specifically on how workplace policies affect women.

Threatening the Independence of the Bureau of Labor Statistics

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) produces the employment, earnings, and labor force participation data that underpin virtually every gender wage gap calculation and workforce trend analysis in the country. In August 2025, Trump fired the BLS Commissioner and has yet to fill the role. The administration has also publicly attacked, without basis, BLS data reflecting women’s workforce participation trends, undermining public confidence in the very statistics that civil rights enforcers, researchers, and policymakers rely on to identify and address discrimination. An independent, fully staffed BLS is essential to evidence-based enforcement of workplace protections. Leaving the agency leaderless while discrediting its findings serves the same purpose as eliminating data collection outright: it makes discrimination harder to see and harder to prove.

Erasing Transgender Workers from Federal Data

• EEOC intake forms have been modified to allow only binary sex options, eliminating the ability for non-binary workers to accurately self-identify when filing discrimination charges.^[27]

The data suppression extends beyond any single agency. The Trump administration has removed vast amounts of government data relevant to women and workers from federal websites, including research, reports, and technical assistance documents that workers, employers, and attorneys relied on to understand workplace rights and identify patterns of discrimination. Taken together, these actions represent a coordinated effort to erase the evidentiary foundation of civil rights enforcement. When the data disappears, so does the ability to prove what is happening to women in the American workplace.

6. Defunding State Enforcement

• May 2025: The EEOC informed state civil rights agencies they will no longer receive credit for investigating disparate impact or gender identity discrimination charges.^[28]
• In some states, the EEOC provides nearly a third of the state enforcement agency’s budget through work-sharing agreements.
• This coerces states into conforming with the administration’s non-enforcement agenda, even though disparate impact and gender identity discrimination remain illegal under federal law.

What This Means for Women and Trans Workers

^[1] Executive Order 14151, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing” (Jan. 20, 2025); Executive Order 14173, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity” (Jan. 21, 2025)

^[2] The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, “Trump’s Executive Orders on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Explained” (Feb. 12, 2025)

^[3] The 19th News, “Trump federal funding freeze worries domestic violence nonprofits” (Feb. 6, 2025)

^[4] HuffPost, “Trump Pulls Research Funding To Protect Pregnant Women From Domestic Violence, Citing ‘DEI’” (March 27, 2025)

^[5] The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, “Trump Administration Civil and Human Rights Rollbacks (2025)

^[6] NPR, “Trump fires EEOC and labor board officials, setting up legal fight.” Jan. 28, 2025.

^[7] HR Dive, “EEOC acting chair says agency is not independent and may follow White House directives.” June 18, 2025.

^[8] Bloomberg Law (Mar. 5, 2025). Multiple transgender lawsuits dismissed.

^[9] EEOC Press Release, “Letters to 20 Law Firms” (Mar. 17, 2025).

^[10] ERA Statement, “Andrea Lucas Confirmation” (July 31, 2025). Senate vote 52-45.

^[11] SHRM, “EEOC Restores Quorum and a Chair Designated” (Nov. 10, 2025).

^[12] EEOC Press Release, “EEOC Commission Votes to Rescind 2024 Harassment Guidance.” Jan. 23, 2026.

^[13] University of Massachusetts, Amherst Center for Employment Equity, “Employer’s Responses to Sexual Harassment.”

^[14] Equal Rights Advocates, “Timeline: Our History”

^[15] Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424 (1971).

^[16] Executive Order 14281, “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy” (Apr. 23, 2025).

^[17] EEOC Motion to Dismiss, EEOC v. Sheetz (June 6, 2025).

^[18] Executive Order 11246 (Sept. 24, 1965; revoked Jan. 21, 2025).

^[19] DOL Acting Secretary order halting OFCCP enforcement (Jan. 24, 2025).

^[20] “DOL Puts Contractor Watchdog Employees on Leave as Layoffs Loom” (Apr. 16, 2025)

^[21] Equal Rights Advocates, “How Trump’s Federal Contractor Executive Order Will Strip Workplace Protections from Millions of Women Workers.” Jan. 30, 2025.

^[22] Bloomberg Law, “EEOC Plans Office Reorganization in Latest Trump-Era Shift” (Sept. 16, 2025).

^[23] National Partnership for Women & Families, “The Trump Administration is Weaponizing the EEOC to Attack Civil Rights.” Jan. 7, 2026.

^[24] EEOC, “EEO Data Collections” (noting EEO-4 and EEO-5 collections “delayed”).

^[25] “A Direct Attack on Women:” Lawmakers Demand Labor Secretary Preserve the Women’s Bureau (June 16, 20205)

^[26] NW Labor Press, “White House targets Women’s Bureau for elimination” (June 5, 2025).

^[27] EEOC “Removing Gender Ideology” (Jan. 28, 2025). Intake forms modified.

^[28] New York Times, “Trump Administration Tells State Regulators It Won’t Back Some Discrimination Claims.” May 27, 2025

^[29] NBC News, “Equal Employment Opportunity Commission head asks white men to report discrimination.” Dec. 19, 2025.

Part III: States Are the Firewall

With federal enforcement agencies gutted and civil rights protections stripped of their teeth, the question becomes: what stands between working women and a total loss of workplace protections? The answer, increasingly, is state law.

California provides the clearest evidence that strong state protections work, and that the gains they deliver can hold even as federal progress reverses.

California vs. the Nation

Nationally, women’s earnings relative to men’s are going backward. The female-to-male earnings ratio dropped from 83% in 2023 to 81% in 2024, the second consecutive annual decline and the worst ratio since 2016.^[2] This marks the first back-to-back decline since the Census Bureau began tracking the data in the 1960s, and the single largest annual widening of the wage gap since 1966.^[3]

California tells a different story. The state’s gender wage gap has narrowed to 13%, significantly outperforming the national average of 18%.^[4] California ranks first in the nation for pay equity. That gap did not close on its own. It closed because the state built an infrastructure of accountability, one law at a time.

How California’s Leadership on Policies Supporting Women Workers Has Become the Firewall: A Blueprint for Other States

From the Stronger California Policy Agenda 2015-2025

In 2015, Equal Rights Advocates drafted and championed the California Fair Pay Act, the strongest equal pay law in the nation. The law’s broader definition of “substantially similar work” closed loopholes that had allowed employers to justify pay disparities, while stronger anti-retaliation protections empowered workers to uncover discriminatory pay. Between 2016 and 2025, with the help of Equal Rights Advocates’ Stronger California Advocates Network, six additional pay equity laws were enacted, expanding protections for workers of all races and genders, banning salary history inquiries, requiring pay data reporting, mandating pay transparency in job postings, and strengthening enforcement and recovery for victims of wage discrimination.

The results are concrete. Major companies have paid more than half a billion dollars in settlements for gender pay discrimination under these laws, including Disney,^[5] Google,^[6] Oracle,^[7] Goldman Sachs,^[8] and others. More than 25 states have followed California’s lead with stronger pay equity laws of their own. Fourteen states plus Washington, D.C. now require pay transparency in job postings, covering more than one in four working women in America.^[9] What started as one state law has become a national movement, and that state-level infrastructure is now the primary defense against federal rollbacks.

Stronger protections against harassment, discrimination, and sexual violence

Workplace harassment remains one of the most persistent barriers to women’s economic security and advancement. According to the McKinsey and LeanIn.Org “Women in the Workplace” report^[10], 37% of women reported experiencing harassment at work in 2024, a rate unchanged from five years earlier, despite the #MeToo movement and widespread adoption of corporate anti-harassment policies. Only half of women express confidence their employer would handle a harassment complaint effectively. Research has found that 72% of workers who experienced sexual harassment faced some form of retaliation when they came forward, and retaliatory defamation lawsuits have become the third most common form of retaliation survivors face in the workplace.^[11]

These dynamics push women out of careers and cost the economy billions. In 2023 alone, the EEOC recovered $665 million for workers who were victims of workplace discrimination, a 30% increase over the prior year.^[12] Yet that figure represents only the fraction of cases that are formally reported and resolved. The EEOC’s own Select Task Force concluded that harassment’s true costs, including decreased productivity, increased turnover, and reputational harm, far exceed direct legal recoveries.^[13]

California has responded with 13 new laws enacted between 2017 and 2025 that close legal loopholes and support survivors’ ability to seek justice.^[14] These laws address silencing mechanisms like NDAs and forced arbitration that had allowed abusers to escape accountability. They give survivors more time to file claims. They protect workers from retaliatory defamation lawsuits, a growing tactic in which harassers sue their own victims to silence them. They strengthen civil rape shield protections. And California became the first state in the nation to codify intersectionality into its anti-discrimination laws, recognizing that workers who face discrimination based on the combination of race and gender, for example, deserve full legal protection.

Without these state-level protections, the rescission of federal harassment guidance and the dismantling of EEOC enforcement capacity would leave millions of workers with no meaningful recourse.

But these laws are producing results. The California Civil Rights Department, now the largest state civil rights agency in the country, secured $154 million in landmark settlements against Riot Games and Activision Blizzard alone, with both companies required to submit to independent workplace monitoring.^[15] The state’s mandatory harassment training law now covers 92 percent of California’s workforce.^[16] Its ban on secret settlements has been replicated in at least a dozen other states and inspired two federal laws.^[17] These are not aspirational policies. They are working.

A Blueprint Other States Are Already Following

California is not alone. States across the country are building the same kind of infrastructure.

Minnesota launched one of the nation’s most comprehensive paid family and medical leave programs in January 2026, providing up to 20 weeks of paid leave with job protection.^[18] Michigan restored strong paid sick leave protections in 2025 after voters fought back against legislative efforts to gut them.^[19] Massachusetts enacted pay transparency requirements in 2025.^[20] In total, 16 states and Washington, D.C. now guarantee paid family leave,^[21] and 14 states plus D.C. require pay transparency in job postings.^[22]

What California pioneered, other states are proving is replicable.

Policy Solutions: What States Can Do

From the Equal Pay Today Policy Agenda 2025-2026: ^[23]

The Equal Pay Today campaign has supported the introduction and/or passage of wage justice legislation in 44 states since 2013 and led advocacy in support of several successful federal executive actions. The following policy solutions address the key drivers of wage gaps and can help states build a firewall against the federal rollback.

Pay Equity and Enforcement

• Codify Executive Order 11246 protections into state law for state contractors. President Trump rescinded this decades-old executive order requiring heightened anti-discrimination protections and equal employment opportunity requirements in federal contracting. States can fill this gap by requiring state contractors to ensure equal employment opportunity.
• Strengthen pay transparency requirements including salary ranges in job postings. Sixteen states now require pay transparency, and more should follow. Job applicants are seeing more jobs posted with salary ranges which supports workers’ ability to negotiate higher pay.
• Ban salary history inquiries to break the cycle of pay discrimination. When employers rely on prior salary to set wages, they perpetuate historical pay gaps that follow women from job to job.
• Expand pay data collection at the state level to fill federal data gaps. You cannot fix what you cannot see. As the federal government destroys workforce data collection, states must step in to track discrimination patterns.
• Extend statutes of limitations and recovery periods for pay discrimination claims, allowing workers to recover lost wages for all discriminatory paychecks and giving them more time to file.

Harassment and Workplace Protections

• Strengthen state anti-harassment laws to cover all workers regardless of employer size. Many workers, particularly in small businesses, lack harassment protections.
• Extend filing deadlines for discrimination and harassment claims. Workers often need more time to understand their rights and seek legal help.
• Require harassment disclosure from employers, including the number of settlements and average resolution time.
• Stop Silencing Survivors through non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), non-disparagement agreements, and forced arbitration which reinforce a culture of silence, enabling abuses to continue

Higher Wages

• Raise state minimum wages to lift women out of poverty. Women—disproportionately women of color— are overrepresented in minimum wage jobs.
• Eliminate the subminimum wage for tipped workers. The subminimum wage contributes to wage theft and harassment, and exacerbates wage gaps. Tipped workers, disproportionately women, should receive at least the full minimum wage with tips on top.

Paid Leave and Caregiver Protections

• Pass paid family and medical leave to provide workers with partial income when they take time off for their own health, a family member’s health, or the birth or adoption of a child.
• Establish paid sick and safe days to allow workers to earn job-protected paid time off for illness or to address domestic violence and safety concerns.
• Expand family definitions in leave laws to include chosen and extended family members.

Protect State Enforcement Infrastructure

• Shield state civil rights agencies from federal defunding pressure. The EEOC is coercing states into abandoning enforcement by cutting funding for agencies that investigate disparate impact or gender identity claims.
• Increase state funding for civil rights enforcement to replace lost federal dollars.
• Maintain enforcement of disparate impact and gender identity protections regardless of federal policy changes. These protections remain the law.

STATE BILLS TO WATCH:

California AB 2155 (ensuring survivors’ access to the courtroom), Illinois SB 2413/HB 3483 (paid family leave), Illinois SB 3777/HB 5386 (codification of disparate impact to safeguard civil rights protections), New York A5906B/S5990 (requiring inclusion of pay ranges and benefits in job postings), Pennsylvania HB 200 (paid family leave), Virginia HB 5 (earned sick and safe leave) and Virginia SB 2/HB 1207 (paid family leave), Virginia SB 215/HB 636 (prohibiting employer reliance on prior salary and requiring inclusion of pay ranges in job postings).

^[1] U.S. Census Bureau, “Income in the United States: 2024,” Current Population Reports, P60-286 (September 2025)

^[2] U.S. Census Bureau, “Income in the United States: 2024,” Table A-7 (September 2025).

^[3] IWPR, “Gender Wage Gap Worsens for Second Year in a Row” (September 2025).  

^[4] UC Berkeley D-Lab, “Minding the Gaps: Pay Equity in California.” CA 13% vs. national 18%.

^[5] HR Dive, “Court approves $43M settlement in Disney gender pay discrimination case,” Sept. 16, 2025

^[6] Miller Shaw Attorneys at Law, “Google Gender Discrimination Settlement: $118M Class Action Payout,” June 28, 2022

^[7] Reuters, “Oracle to settle female employees’ equal pay case for $25 mln,” Feb. 14, 2024

^[8] Associated Press, “Goldman Sachs settles gender discrimination suit for $215 million,” May 9, 2023

^[9] Trusaic, “Class Action Pay Transparency Lawsuits On The Rise,” Nov. 7, 2023

^[10] McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.Org, “Women in the Workplace 2024” (September 2024)

^[11] National Women’s Law Center, “Coming Forward” (analyzing TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund data, 2020). Feb. 1, 2022

^[12] EEOC, “EEOC Releases Annual Performance Report for Fiscal Year 2023” March 11, 2024

^[13] EEOC Select Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace, Report of Co-Chairs Chai R. Feldblum and Victoria A. Lipnic (June 2016)

^[14] SB 1137 (Smallwood-Cuevas), 2024; Stronger California Advocates Network

^[15] California Civil Rights Department, “Court Grants Preliminary Approval of Landmark $100 Million Settlement of California Civil Rights Department Case Against Riot Games, Inc.,” July 25, 2022

^[16] Vector Solutions (formerly EverFi), “What You Need to Know About SB 1343: California’s Sexual Harassment Training Mandate”

^[17] Venable LLP, “The List of States Regulating Non-Disclosure Provisions Continues to Grow,” June 2024

^[18] Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, “Minnesota Paid Leave”

^[19] Michigan Advance, “Supreme Court order complicates conversation as paid family leave bills move to Senate floor” (Dec. 11, 2024)

^[20] Epstein Becker Green, “On Trend: New Pay Equity Laws Coming to Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Vermont in 2025” (2024)

^[21] McGillivary Steele Elkin LLP, “Paid Family Leave Is Expanding — What Workers Need to Know Now” (2026)

^[22] Paycor, “2026 Pay Transparency Laws by State” (2026)

^[23] Equal Pay Today Policy Agenda 2025-2026, Equal Rights Advocates.