Last week, it was reported that the Trump administration’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has sued a Coca-Cola distributor for hosting a women’s networking retreat. The EEOC is arguing that a two-day event where approximately 250 women gathered for speakers, team-building, and networking with company leadership constituted unlawful sex discrimination against male employees under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The civil rights law that was enacted to protect marginalized people from workplace discrimination is now being weaponized to shut down the very gatherings that help marginalized people succeed in the workplace.

Reinterpretation Isn’t New

In my role with CDR, I pay close attention to how civil rights law is interpreted, because interpretation determines who gets protected and who doesn’t. Reinterpreting existing statutory language to reach new conclusions is not new. The Obama administration used it when it recognized that discrimination “because of sex” under Title VII and Title IX could and should encompass discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

That reinterpretation expanded rights. It recognized that LGBTQ+ people were already covered by existing law — the country just hadn’t been reading the law correctly. The Obama-era EEOC concluded in 2012 that gender identity discrimination was a form of sex discrimination, and in 2015 extended the same reasoning to sexual orientation. The Supreme Court eventually affirmed this logic in Bostock v. Clayton County in 2020.

The current EEOC is once again reinterpreting the law — but in reverse. Instead of expanding protections to reach people who have been excluded, it is contracting them to punish companies for uplifting marginalized people. EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas has publicly encouraged white men to file discrimination complaints and has compared women’s networking events to the racially segregated employee social events of the 1970s.

That comparison is offensive on its face.

Women gathering to support each other in a male-dominated industry is not the same as a company excluding Black workers from the company picnic. One is about building power among people who have been historically shut out. The other was about maintaining a racial caste system. Conflating the two requires either a profound ignorance of history or a deliberate choice to obscure it.

Why Gathering Matters

At the Center for Disability Rights, we know — from decades of lived experience and community organizing — that when marginalized people gather, transformative things happen.

Peer support is not a luxury. It is a lifeline. When a woman in a male-dominated industry sits down with other women who understand her daily experience — the interruptions, the second-guessing, the invisible labor — something shifts. She realizes she is not imagining it. She finds language for what she has been experiencing. She builds relationships that can open doors, provide mentorship, and sustain her through the grind.

The same is true for Disabled people, for LGBTQ+ people, for people of color, for immigrants, for every community that has had to fight for a seat at the table. Gathering is how we survive. It is how we organize. It is how we transform individual struggle into collective power.

This is not abstract theory. The independent living movement — which CDR has been part of for decades and RCIL has been since its inception — was built on the principle that Disabled people are the best experts on our own lives and that we need spaces where we can come together, share knowledge, provide mutual support, and develop the leadership that changes systems. Peer support is one of the core services that every Center for Independent Living is required to provide, because Congress recognized what Disabled people already knew: connection with people who share your experience is essential to self-determination.

The Value — For Everyone

Here is what we all need to understand: when companies invest in gatherings for marginalized employees, they are not just doing something nice. They are building a stronger organization.

Employees who feel connected, supported, and seen are more productive, more loyal, and more likely to step into leadership. Networking events for underrepresented groups help close the relationship gaps that informal “old boys’ club” networks create — gaps that directly affect who get promoted, who gets mentored, and who stays. Women who attended that Coca-Cola event described it as energizing and useful. They built connections with senior leadership. They returned to work more engaged.

That is exactly the outcome any smart employer should want.

Silence = Death. Isolation = Defeat.

The lesson from every civil rights movement is that gathering is power. When marginalized people come together, we find our voices. When we are kept apart, we are easier to ignore, easier to exploit, and easier to harm.

The current administration understands this. That is why it is going after the gatherings.

Our answer must be to find new ways to gather. To adapt. To build community infrastructure that is resilient enough to survive shifts in political power. Companies that share these values have a role to play — not by retreating from their commitments to marginalized employees, but by finding creative, community-centered ways to fulfill them.

A Path Forward: Community Partnerships

The EEOC lawsuit’s goal is to create a chilling effect. Companies that want to support their marginalized employees are now being told that doing so through internal programming might expose them to federal litigation. That is a problem — but it is not the end of the road.

There is another model: Partner with community-based organizations to create these gathering spaces.

Instead of hiring an outside consultant to host an internal women’s retreat, a company could sponsor a community event organized by a nonprofit with expertise in supporting that population. Instead of running an in-house affinity group, a company could fund a series of networking and peer support events hosted by an independent organization.

This approach has real advantages:

Community organizations bring deep expertise. At CDR, we have decades of experience facilitating peer support, building cross-disability community, and creating spaces where people can show up as their full selves. We know how to design gatherings that are accessible, affirming, and genuinely transformative — not performative. There are community-based organizations in every space that bring the expertise and experience CDR brings to the table, and they want to be of service.

Community-hosted events reach beyond a single workplace. When a company sponsors a community gathering, it connects its employees to a broader network of peers, mentors, and allies. They become part of a person’s lifelong support system. The relationships build at a community event not only produce a stronger internal workforce; they build bridges that help a company grow in ways that nobody may have previously thought of.

Sponsorship is a legitimate business activity. Companies have always sponsored community events — charity galas, 5K runs, cultural festivals. Sponsoring events that support women, Disabled people, LGBTQ+ people, people of color, and other marginalized communities is no different. It demonstrates a company’s values, builds goodwill, and supports the communities where its employees and customers live.

And critically, community-hosted events are not employer-sponsored employment activities. They are community programming supported by corporate sponsorship. The legal terrain is different.

CDR Is Ready

The Center for Disability Rights and the Regional Center for Independent Living have been creating gathering spaces for Disabled people for decades. We know how to bring people together across difference, how to facilitate peer support that is rooted in shared experience, and how to build the kind of community that sustains people through hard times.

If your company wants to support its Disabled employees, its women employees, its LGBTQ+ employees, its employees of color — and you are looking for a way to do that without painting a target on your back — talk to community organizations. Talk to us.

We can host networking events. We can facilitate peer support groups. We can create spaces where your employees connect with a broader community of people who share their identity and their struggles. And your sponsorship makes that possible while demonstrating your company’s commitment to the communities you serve.

The right to gather is not a perk. It is a necessity. And organizations like CDR exist to make sure it happens.