The Guardline
A man who sued his college after being suspended over a rape allegation was hired into a powerful position at the federal agency tasked with defending workers against workplace discrimination, including sex discrimination.
Benjamin North, who maintained his innocence during the lawsuit, went on to become an attorney who took public stances against what he characterized as the excesses of Title IX, the law prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded education.
Less than eight years after his case was closed following an agreement with the university, North has quietly become the new assistant general counsel of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, according to a screenshot of the agency’s employee directory and an agency employee who requested anonymity to avoid retaliation.
“You need people in that office who understand that their job is to uphold the law and to apply the law faithfully.”
North now reports directly to Acting General Counsel Catherine Eschbach, according to the employee.
“The general counsel’s office is an incredibly important part of the EEOC,” said Jenny Yang, a partner at the law firm Outten & Golden and a former EEOC chair. The general counsel holds the power to decide which employers to sue and over which issues, and oversees litigation brought in the agency’s 15 regional offices, and assistant general counsels help coordinate litigation “for the entire agency,” Yang said. They often review cases and their evidence to evaluate the merits and help determine whether the agency should invest its limited resources into pursuing a suit, she said.
“You need people in that office who understand that their job is to uphold the law and to apply the law faithfully,” she said. (Neither North nor the EEOC responded to requests for comment.)
North’s role could have even more heft than usual, the EEOC employee said, given how many attorneys have left the agency and the office of the general counsel under the second Trump administration. The office is typically filled with “experienced litigators,” the employee said, noting that North was still a college student 10 years ago and now has been hired into “a very senior position” in which he will “have a huge impact on the cases that the EEOC chooses to bring.”
College Allegation Case
North sued Catholic University after he was accused of rape by a fellow student, investigated, and suspended for two years. In his legal complaint, he claimed he and his accuser met at a party, then in an upstairs bathroom “engaged in consensual sex.” According to the judge’s ruling in the case, North sought to refute the accuser’s allegation that she had taken three shots of vodka and became distraught. The university found that she had been incapable of giving consent due to intoxication and suspended North.
North alleged in his suit that the university had violated its own policies as well as Title IX, which prohibits gender discrimination at federally funded institutions. The Title IX claim rested on North’s allegation that the university had been biased against him and gave his accuser “preferential treatment,” thereby “discriminating against [him] based on his gender.” He sought $1 million in damages as well as injunctive relief.
In 2019, the case was closed when North and his legal team stipulated to dismissal, indicating an agreement between the plaintiff and defense, usually a settlement. (Catholic University declined to comment.)
North also dealt with Title IX claims as an attorney after completing law school. Before taking his role in the government, North most recently worked at Binnall Law Group. The firm published an article on its website in 2018 saying that universities use Title IX to “abuse the Constitutional rights of students accused of sexual misconduct.”
At Binnall, North served as a Title IX adviser who helped students in such proceedings. (Binnall did not respond to a request for comment.)
North wrote an op-ed for The Federalist in 2021 about Title IX arguing that a Biden administration nominee had “led the charge against students’ civil rights and due process” and that men’s rights are often violated in university proceedings after they’re accused of sexual assault.
Now, North could help guide litigation at the EEOC.
“It sends a concerning signal to have hired somebody with his background.”
“Given that we are the agency tasked with enforcing protections against sexual violence in the workplace, it sends a concerning signal to have hired somebody with his background,” the EEOC employee said.
That signal will be sent both internally to staff, the employee said, about what the agency wants to focus on and to workers who have experienced sexual harassment or assault at work about whether the agency will take their claims seriously.
Reshaping the EEOC
North is not the first EEOC hire who has raised eyebrows during the second Trump administration. Last April, EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas appointed Shannon Royce, a longtime Christian conservative activist, as her chief of staff. Royce had been serving as president of the Christian Employers Alliance, which sued the EEOC in 2021 over its defense of the rights of trans people at work. Her group also sued the EEOC over its inclusion of abortion care in the protections offered by the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.
On January 12, the Christian Employers Alliance announced that it had notched an agreement with the EEOC in which the agency agreed not to enforce abortion and gender identity requirements against its members while the EEOC “considers revising its policies.”
Lucas also hired Connor Clegg, a former Fox News producer, in the agency’s communications department. In 2018, Clegg was impeached as student body president at Texas State University over uncovered social media posts in which he mocked Asian tourists with hashtags that included “#pearlharborwasbad” and “#kimjongil.” He was later found not guilty by the Student Government Supreme Court.
More recently, Clegg posted a long rant to social media about an interaction with a traffic enforcement officer who “barely spoke a lick of English” and reposted a tweet from late Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk that said, “There is an undeniable War on White People in The West.”
North’s hire comes after Lucas has asserted new priorities at the agency.
In a post to X in December, she directly solicited complaints from white men who allege they’ve been discriminated at work based on their race or sex. She has also instructed agency officials to focus on cases that line up with her own personal priorities, which include “defending the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights,” “rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination,” and “religious bias and harassment, including antisemitism.”
Meanwhile, under her leadership, the general counsel’s office dropped the litigation it had already brought on behalf of transgender workers and in a disparate impact racial discrimination case.
