Nearly two weeks after several House Democrats sounded the alarm on Treasury Secretary Scott Bessents proposal to remove sexual orientation and gender identity from a list of protected categories on the departments Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) forms, a former Treasury Department employee is shedding light on efforts to roll back LGBTQ+ inclusion and protections under Bessent.Late last month, out Reps. Becca Balint (D-VT), Mark Takano (D-CA), and Ritchie Torres (D-NY) sent a letter to Bessent asking him not to remove the terms from Treasurys EEO complaint forms, warning that the move would make it harder to combat unlawful workplace discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation. Related Betrayal: Gay MAGA official could make it easier to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people Gay Democrats are sounding the alarm. But Christen Boas Hayes told the Washington Blade this week that the department has already stopped processing anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination complaints. Never Miss a Beat Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights. Subscribe to our Newsletter today Hayes worked on the policy team at the departments Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) from 2020 to March 2025, and also served as president of the Treasurys LGBTQ+ employee resource group. They told the Blade that the removal of sexual orientation and gender identity from Treasurys EEO complaint forms was just a procedural recognition of something thats already happening.Internally, from speaking to two EEO staff members, the changes are already taking place from an EEO perspective on what kind of cases will be found to have the basis for a complaint, Hayes said.Hayes claims that one former member of the departments LGBTQ+ groups board left Treasury after experiencing explicitly transphobic treatment from supervisors. Hayes said the former board member was denied a promotion and did not have faith in the EEO complaint process.He decided to just leave, which was, of course, such a loss for Treasury and our Employee Resource Group and all of our employees at Treasury, Hayes told the Blade. Hayes said that part of their own reason for accepting a deferred resignation offer earlier this year as part of major staffing cuts under the administration was that the environment for LGBTQ staff members was increasingly negative in the wake of the presidents anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-diversity executive orders.They claim that while the umbrella LGBTQ+ employee resource group (ERG) they led was not explicitly instructed to shut down, as other smaller groups at the IRS and FinCEN were, implicit suggestions to stop emailing about the groups activities and to hold meetings off campus and outside of work hours contributed to the sense that the group could no longer function effectively, as did the firing of DEI staffers who helped make the groups events possible. Hayes said the groups information was also scrubbed from internal websites.Employees [are] feeling like its harder to find members of their own community because theres no email anymore to ask when the next event is or to ask about navigating healthcare or other questions, Hayes said. If there is no ERG to go to to ask for support for their specific issue, that contributes to isolation, which contributes to a worse work environment. The department, Hayes said, has also removed gender-neutral bathrooms and made it more difficult for employees with nonbinary gender markers on their IDs to access government buildings. They also note that under Bessent, the first out Treasury Secretary, the department did not host a Pride event.Employees notice changes like that, Hayes told the Blade. Things like the fact that the Secretarys official bio says spouse instead of husband. It makes employees wonder if they too should be fearful of being their full selves at work.Subscribe to theLGBTQ Nation newsletterand be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.