Federal workers told to remove pronouns from email signatures

Employees at federal agencies were instructed to remove pronouns from their email signatures by the end of the workday Friday, according to internal memos obtained by The Hill, in compliance with an executive order issued by President Trump and instructions from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

Labor Department employees were told Friday afternoon in an email that their updated signatures should include only their full legal name and not pronouns.

State Department workers received similar instructions Friday to update their email signatures, according to a memo reviewed by The Hill.

Workers at the Department of Transportation, the Energy Department and the Department of Health and Human Services were also told to remove their pronouns, ABC News reported Friday.

Labor Department employees were told their signatures could also not include “nicknames."

The directive to remove nicknames appears directed toward transgender workers who have not yet legally changed their names, essentially requiring them to use their "deadname" or their name before transitioning.

At the Labor Department, one supervisor had previously suggested employees remove their pronouns from their email signatures, suggesting the new administration may otherwise target them, according to a department employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal communications.

“I want you all to be employed here for a long time,” the superviser said, according to the source.

Agencies’ directives to employees come after Trump, during his first day back in office, signed a pair of executive orders targeting transgender rights and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, the latter of which his administration has called “radical and wasteful.”

An OPM memo issued Wednesday instructed department heads to “review agency email systems such as Outlook and turn off features that prompt users for their pronouns.”

The memo also told agencies to place employees whose job description involves “promoting gender ideology” on administrative leave by 5 p.m. EST Friday and bar transgender workers from using single-sex facilities that best align with their gender identity.

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