Eric Dreiband is not the right person to protect our civil and constitutional rights
By Fatima Goss Graves, President and CEO, National Women’s Law Center
Senators will vote soon on the nomination of Eric Dreiband to be Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, one of the nation’s most senior officials tasked with protecting civil and constitutional rights. At this moment when the Trump administration seeks to roll back decades of progress on women’s rights as well as other landmark civil rights protections, Mr. Dreiband is the wrong person to fill this critical position.
Mr. Dreiband has worked to narrow the scope of rights and remedies under crucial sex discrimination laws enforced by the Civil Rights Division — including those providing protection from pay discrimination, pregnancy discrimination, and sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination.
Mr. Dreiband opposed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, bipartisan legislation which restored protections against pay discrimination stripped away by the Supreme Court’s outrageous and erroneous 5–4 decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. He testified that he “did not believe that the bill would advance the public interest.” He also wrongly claimed that the Ledbetter decision was consistent with years of Supreme Court precedent.
Mr. Dreiband and his defenders say he proposed an alternative means of redressing pay discrimination that would have provided more protection than the Fair Pay Act. In fact, his alternative would have been more burdensome for women and narrowed the options for initiating pay discrimination claims.
On other issues of importance to women and their families, Mr. Dreiband has routinely been on the wrong side. He has advocated on behalf of employers seeking to limit the ability of pregnant workers to challenge discrimination. He has supported efforts to allow employers’ religious beliefs to override women’s right to insurance coverage of birth control, challenging the accommodation to the Affordable Care Act’s birth control benefit.
Mr. Dreiband is nominated to be the country’s senior civil rights advocate, but he has refused to affirm that federal civil rights laws enforced by the Justice Department protect LGBTQ people from discrimination. And his record does nothing to allay these concerns. He defended the University of North Carolina when the state was sued by the Justice Department for violating Title VII and Title IX after it passed an odious law, HB2, which limited transgender individuals’ access to public restrooms and changing facilities. At his hearing, he declined to answer when asked whether he believed Title IX, a federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education, protects transgender students — an especially ominous sign since earlier this year, the Trump Administration rescinded a Department of Education guidance clarifying that this law provides such protection.
Over the course of his career, Mr. Dreiband has attacked broad civil rights enforcement authority and tools that are vital to uncover and combat systemic discrimination.
Over the course of his career, Mr. Dreiband has attacked broad civil rights enforcement authority and tools that are vital to uncover and combat systemic discrimination. And his statements and litigation positions undermine the authority and ability of another key civil rights agency — the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — to investigate and litigate systemic discrimination cases.
The National Women’s Law Center is not alone in concluding that Mr. Dreiband’s record renders him unfit for this position. Dozens of leading organizations fighting to protect our civil and constitutional rights and core American values, including the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, AFL-CIO, National Employment Law Project, the Service Employees International Union, UnidosUS, Lambda Legal, Planned Parenthood, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, among many others, oppose his confirmation. His record demonstrates that we can expect him to undermine antidiscrimination laws and enforcement efforts that are critical to equality and opportunity for women, people of color, LGBTQ people, and vulnerable and marginalized communities.
Women in America — and all Americans — deserve better.
Fatima Goss Graves is President and CEO at the National Women’s Law Center.








