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.
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.’
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.’
‘Ignoring actual issues plaguing our nation, the Biden administration, unsurprisingly, chose to expend resources on controversial DEI initiatives,’ Functional Government Initiative told Fox News Digital in a statement. ‘De-gendering restrooms and diverting staff time to these policies did nothing for EPA’s statutory mission. Yet, the Biden administration fostered dysfunction by advancing radical ideologies of the few, at the expense of the many.’
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.
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.’
Fox News Digital reached out to Biden for comment but did not immediately receive a response.