Acting Chair Andrea R. Lucas understands that our nation’s civil rights laws reject identity politics and instead focus on individual rights and equality.  She prioritizes evenhanded enforcement of civil rights laws for all Americans, including by rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination; protecting American workers from anti-American national origin discrimination; defending the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights, including women’s rights to single-sex spaces; protecting workers from religious bias and harassment; and remedying other areas that have been historically under-enforced by the agency.  

Lucas has served on the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) since 2020, when she was nominated by President Trump during his first term and confirmed by the U.S. Senate as a Commissioner.  She was designated as Acting Chair of the EEOC by President Trump on January 20, 2025, and was renominated to another term on the EEOC on March 24, 2025.

In addition to her enforcement priorities, Lucas believes protecting workers starts with preventing discrimination.  As a result, compliance and education efforts have been important components of her work both during and before her time on the Commission.  During her tenure on the Commission, Lucas has written and spoken frequently about challenging and emerging issues in employment and civil rights law to educate workers about their rights, help employers comply with their responsibilities, and correct common misunderstandings about the law.  

Before her appointment to the EEOC, Lucas was a member of the labor and employment and litigation practice groups of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP in the firm’s Washington, D.C. office.  While at Gibson Dunn, Lucas represented and advised employers and boards of directors on a wide variety of employment-related issues, including significant employment discrimination litigation, sexual harassment and other sensitive workplace investigations, and compliance with federal and state employment discrimination statutes. 

Lucas received her B.A. in philosophy, politics, and economics, magna cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania; and her J.D. from the University of Virginia, where she served as an Articles Editor on the Virginia Law Review.  Earlier in her career, she clerked on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.  Lucas and her husband have two young daughters, one of whom was born near the start of Lucas’s tenure on the Commission.