The sudden removal of federal harassment guidance has landed at a delicate moment for women in commercial real estate, an industry where gender discrimination is now seen as the primary barrier to advancement and reports of sexual harassment have barely budged in five years.
A Road Map Removed
For decades, hiring managers have relied on the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's written guidance to interpret what constitutes unlawful harassment and how to respond to it, treating the agency's examples and commentary as close to a roadmap.
That map vanished last week when the EEOC voted 2–1 to rescind its nearly 200‑page harassment guidance, skipping the usual public notice and comment process, while pulling the document from its website a day after the vote.
The guidance, approved in 2024 during the Biden administration, laid out how harassment based on protected characteristics such as sex, race, religion, age and disability is defined under federal law and included more than 70 real‑world scenarios employers might encounter.
The current EEOC chair, Andrea Lucas, who opposed the guidance when it was issued, argued that a key section tying harassment protections to gender identity and sexual orientation went beyond what the Supreme Court required in its 2020 Bostock v. Clayton County decision, which held that discrimination "because of sex" in hiring and firing covers LGBTQ workers.
She has maintained that Bostock applies only to hiring and firing decisions, not to the broader conditions of the workplace and has insisted that "biological sex is real, and it matters" — a view that, in her reading, permits repeated use of a transgender worker's former name or pronouns without crossing into unlawful harassment.
The Fight Over LGBTQ‑Related Protections
Some of the most controversial passages in the 2024 guidance are built directly on Bostock and subsequent cases, spelling out that misgendering, refusal to use a person's current name or pronouns, or denying access to bathrooms consistent with a worker's gender identity could, in some circumstances, amount to harassment.
Those portions had already been partially neutralized: last May, a federal court in Texas vacated the sections on sexual orientation and gender identity, finding that the EEOC had exceeded its authority. The commission responded by appending a notice to the guidance and graying out the affected paragraphs online, effectively sidelining them while leaving the rest of the document intact.
Despite that partial court‑ordered fix, Lucas advanced a final rule late last year to rescind the guidance in its entirety, sending it to the White House Office of Management and Budget and receiving approval early this year. She has downplayed the impact of the move, saying the decision "will not leave a void where employers are free to harass wherever they see fit, leaving a trail of victims in their wake," and stressing that nothing in the underlying anti‑discrimination laws has changed.
"The EEOC will not tolerate unlawful harassment, as was the case before the guidance document was issued and will remain so even after the guidance document is rescinded," she said before the vote.
Legal Standards Intact, Practical Tools Lost
Employment lawyers say the legal baseline has not changed — federal statutes and case law still prohibit harassment based on protected characteristics — but the lack of official interpretive guidance will be acutely felt, especially by smaller employers, Craig Leen, a partner at K&L Gates, who previously served in the labor department, told NPR.
In 2024, the EEOC received 88,531 new discrimination charges and 40 percent included harassment allegations, indicating how frequently workers bring such claims to the agency. Without a detailed, up‑to‑date blueprint, employers who lack in‑house counsel may struggle to translate legal standards into training, internal investigations and day‑to‑day management decisions.
Leen, who previously served in the Labor Department, described EEOC guidance as a kind of "safe harbor," giving companies confidence that compliant policies and practices will stand up in an investigation or lawsuit.
An Uneven Landscape For Women In CRE
For women in commercial real estate, the policy shift lands against a statistical backdrop that suggests both incremental progress and persistent vulnerability. According to CREW Network's 2025 benchmark study, women in commercial real estate remain far more likely than men to encounter harassment and sexist behavior on the job.
Nearly six percent of women reported experiencing sexual harassment at work in the previous 12 months, compared with less than one percent of men — a rate that has fallen only one percentage point since 2020.
About one‑third of women said they had been subjected to sexist jokes, remarks about their appearance or body or derogatory comments about their gender during the past year, down from 45 percent in 2020 but still described in the report as "unacceptably prevalent."
The CREW study does not show an epidemic of harassment engulfing the industry, but it does depict a landscape where a meaningful minority of women continue to face unwanted sexual advances or touching at work and a far larger share routinely encounter gender‑based slights and hostility.
For the first time since the organization began tracking these issues two decades ago, women identified gender discrimination as their primary barrier to career success, ahead of concerns such as work‑life balance, mentorship and promotion opportunities. That perception has grown stronger with each iteration of the survey, even as many respondents said opportunities and support for women have improved since 2020.
Gray Areas Without A Guide
In that context, the EEOC's decision to pull its harassment guidance without a replacement may deepen uncertainty for both employers and employees trying to navigate gray areas — especially around conduct that may not meet the legal threshold for a hostile work environment but can shape whether women stay in the field or rise into senior roles.
CREW's data show that women are more likely than men to take career breaks of three months or more, often for family reasons, and more than twice as likely to say their compensation or advancement has been negatively affected by family or marital status. When harassment or sexist behavior adds another layer of friction, those pressures can compound.
The absence of current guidance is unlikely to change whether a court ultimately finds harassment occurred in a specific case; judges and juries will still look to statutes and binding precedent.
But several current and former EEOC officials tell NPR it could affect what happens long before a case reaches court. Employees who believe they have been harassed must first file with the EEOC, which decides whether to investigate, attempt conciliation or issue a right‑to‑sue letter. Detailed guidance has historically helped the agency's staff apply consistent standards and helped employers design training and reporting systems likely to be viewed favorably by investigators.
For a sector like commercial real estate, where deals are relationship‑driven and informal networking still plays a central role, a lack of clarity could leave firms guessing which jokes at a client dinner or comments in a late‑night email might cross the line — and which responses will satisfy regulators.
Industry Standards Under Pressure
At the same time, industry lawyers note that the rescission does not relieve companies of their legal responsibilities or their exposure. Courts can and do find harassment when employers fail to act on complaints or tolerate environments that target workers based on sex or other protected traits. In that sense, the change may shift the burden back onto individual firms, trade groups and industry associations to define best practices, update training and set internal expectations, rather than relying on a single federal document.
Some in the industry say that might spur more tailored responses. CREW's research indicates that harassment and discrimination in commercial real estate often intersect with other structural dynamics, including compensation models that rely heavily on commission and bonus, leadership ranks that remain overwhelmingly male and workplaces that are still not very diverse by race and ethnicity. Only 23 percent of respondents said at least a quarter of their colleagues are racial or ethnic minorities and about 22 percent described their workplaces as not very or not at all diverse.
Others worry that the loss of a widely recognized federal reference point will weaken efforts to standardize expectations across companies and markets. The CREW study found that fewer than half of employers have formal programs to advance women, and even fewer have initiatives for other underrepresented groups, leaving a patchwork of practices from one firm to another. Without EEOC guidance to anchor policy, those gaps could widen.
A Test Of How Firms Respond
For now, the practical impact of the commission's vote on women in commercial real estate may be less about an immediate spike in harassment and more about a subtle recalibration of risk and responsibility.
The law still forbids harassment, but employers who had treated the EEOC's document as a checklist may find themselves operating in a murkier environment, just as many women in the industry say gender discrimination has become their primary obstacle. Whether that prompts firms to double down on their own standards or wait for the next administration to chart a new course will help determine how much the rescission ultimately goes beyond Washington.
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