Former President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sought to “de-gender” bathrooms and locker rooms in agency offices as part of its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) push, according to an unearthed memo confirmed to Fox News Digital.
A Biden-era EPA internal memo, obtained by the watchdog Functional Government Initiative and first reported by the Washington Free Beacon, recommended that the federal environmental agency “increase participation in voluntary self-disclosure of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI)” and “incorporate LGBTQIA+ prospective employees into hiring and recruiting activities.”
The Biden administration also pushed to “de-gender restroom/locker room access” at agency offices, “add gender pronouns in MS 360” and “change style manual requirement for gendered honorifics in Agency Correspondence,” according to the 38-page report, which the EPA confirmed to Fox News Digital.
The agency highlighted their efforts toward “increased access to gender-neutral bathrooms,” revealing that a nationwide survey conducted by the Office of Facilities Management found that, at the time, there were 155 gender-neutral bathrooms and locker rooms for the entire agency.
EPA TERMINATES BIDEN ADMIN’S GREEN GRANTS WORTH $20B, ZELDIN SAYS
Former President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency sought to “de-gender” bathrooms and locker rooms in agency offices as part of its diversity, equity, and inclusion push, according to an unearthed memo. (Getty Images)
Additionally, according to the memo, only four of their 10 regional offices did not have gender-neutral bathrooms.
Another objective of the Biden EPA included ensuring “inclusion of LGBTQIA+ employees in recruitment efforts, career development and training, data collection, analysis, and measurement, DEIA employee engagement, sustainability, accountability, and accessibility.”
An unearthed Biden-era memo found that the former Democratic president’s Environmental Protection Agency promoted de-gendering restrooms at agency offices. (Andrew Harnik)
In accordance with Biden’s order making DEI a priority of his administration, the EPA charged “all agencies with taking steps to ensure that Federal employees have their gender identities accurately reflected and identified in the workplace, including by exploring opportunities to expand access to gender-neutral facilities inside federal workplaces.”
“Under the leadership of then-EPA administrator Michael Regan, in 2021, the agency created an employee-led ‘DEIA implementation team’ that was empowered to establish workgroups and take DEI-related actions,” Functional Government Initiative said in a statement that was posted on X and shared with the Free Beacon. “The goal, according to the Biden EPA, was to ‘embed’ DEI agency-wide, create ‘cultural change,’ and establish the agency as a DEI model for the entire federal government.”
The report comes as President Donald Trump’s EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin reworks the key environmental agency with the termination of hundreds of millions in DEI and environmental grants issued by the previous administration.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has been terminating environmental grants issued under the previous administration. (Al Drago)
The EPA has been working closely with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the cost-cutting department led by Elon Musk, to make the spending cuts.
“I am canceling over 400 DEI and Environmental Justice grants across 9 grant programs totaling $1.7 BILLION, bringing @EPA’s total savings to over $2 BILLION!” Zeldin wrote in a post on X on Monday. “This fourth round of EPA/@DOGE cuts was our biggest yet.”
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Fox News Digital reached out to Biden and the Functional Government Initiative for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
