By Alexandra Olson and Claire Savage, Associated Press Business Writers
Arlington, Virginie (AP) – The acting chief of the main Federal Agency for the Protection of Workers’ Rights reported a pivot to prioritize President Donald Trump’s campaign to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the private and public sectors.
The initial measures taken by Andrea Lucas, the acting chief of the Equal Employment Commission, obtained his solid support from the Trump administration, which has evolved against Dei through the decrees in a tutor with the programs dismantled in federal agencies and threatened investigations and financial penalties staggered for federal entrepreneurs who are involved in diversity practices “Illegal”. Trump recently appointed Lucas, who has long been a frank critic of Dei practices, she led to discriminatory job preferences, a new five -year term as a commissioner.
But the former EEOC Democratic officials and eminent civil rights groups accused Lucas of having taken shortcuts that replace his authority and they urged employers to be wary of his directives and his advice, if not completely ignored them.
The most recent flash point includes two “technical assistance” documents published by the EEOC as well as the Ministry of Justice which is trying to clarify what could constitute “discrimination linked to the DEI at work” and to provide advice on how workers can file complaints on these concerns.
Documents are largely aimed at practices such as training, the employment resource group and scholarship programs, warning such programs – depending on how they are built – may arise under the title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in terms of employment and sex.
The documents followed letters that Lucas sent to 20 eminent law firms requiring information on diversity scholarships and other programs which, according to her, could be proof of discriminatory practices.
A group of 10 former Democratic commissioners and advisers published its own letter Thursday warning the legal community that the documents of I give the misleading impression that the common programs “are responsible for legal danger” and have rejected them as reflecting “the personal opinion” of Lucas. The letter has offered a counter-functionation on how employers should continue to implement training and other practices that EEOC political documents encourage discrimination.
Last month, seven of the same former EEOC officials sent Lucas a letter warning that she seemed to exceed her authority with her requests for information from the 20 law firms without first launching an official investigation. A group of eminent civil rights organizations has gone further in their own letter to Lucas, urging law firms to ignore their requests because they have no legal obligation to respond.
“This is not how the EEOC works. No commissioner – not even the president – has the power to send threatening letters requiring private information to employers,” said Noreen Farrell, director of equality rights defenders, one of the civic rights organizations that signed the national Women’s Law Center. “The president of the EEOC cannot simply rewrite decades of established law of civil rights with a hastily written memo.”
Jenny Yang, former EEOC commissioner under former president Barack Obama, said that Lucas’ letters to the 20 law firms were unprecedented at EEOC, which initiated most of the surveys in response to complaints filed by workers. In very rare cases, a commissioner can carry his own charge against an employer, but he would not be made public and would oblige the commissioner to provide proof of possible discrimination under the perjury, said Yang.
Lawyers’ firms – including some of the 20 targeted by Lucas – are already under pressure to change their approach to diversity and inclusion in response to separate decrees designed to punish them for having taken care of the president’s rivals as customers and other actions that have made him angry. For example, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom recently learned that the President intended to make an order targeting him on his pro Bono legal work and his diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The company has therefore agreed to review its hiring practices, among others.
The 20 law firms targeted in Lucas’ letters did not answer questions from the Associated Press to find out if they intended to answer his requests. Lucas did not respond to the request for comments on the DEI technical assistance documents, and the EEOC refused to say if law firms have a legal obligation to respond to his letters or if they would be confronted with a penalty for not having done so.
But Lucas, a republican who was first appointed to the EEOC in 2020, has long argued that she did not reinterpret the laws on civil rights but rather seems the alarm that many companies have adopted Dei practices that cross the line of discrimination. Lucas argued that the EEOC closed its eyes on risky corporate practices, which, according to it, proliferated, in particular after the protests of racial justice in 2020 which followed the murder of the police of George Floyd.
“Far too many employers defend certain types of breed preferences or such good sex, provided they are motivated by commercial interests in” diversity, equity or inclusion “”, said Lucas in a statement announcing the new technical assistance on Dei.
Many employers are likely to pay attention to its warnings, because the EEOC points out that it will have become a powerful ally for workers claiming discrimination from the practices of I.
Anuradha Hebbar, president of the CEO Action for Inclusion & Diversity, a branch of the influential company for human resources management, said that the EEOC has particularly specified that companies should avoid scholarships, internships and other programs that are only open to women or certain racial groups.
Stefan Padfield of Think Tank Center for Public Policy Research congratulated the EEOC shift as an essential course correction that will open the valves for complaints against the practices of dei which should be deemed illegal.
Lucas admitted that she could not unilaterally modify some of the agency’s directives and policies that could contradict Trump’s decrees, although the EEOC has already decided to suppress seven proceedings alleging discrimination against transgender and non -binary people in response to a presidential order declaring that the government recognizes only male and women.
The change of such policies – including the EEOC five -year strategic application plan which initiates support for DEI – would require a majority vote by the five commissioners of the agency. But Trump recently dismissed two of these commissioners – the two Democrats – before their terms expired in a decision which upset 60 years of previous for an agency created by the congress as independent and bipartite.
In their letter Thursday, the former EEOC officials accused Lucas of picking cases of cherry picking discrimination to transmit the message that training and other DEI practices are intrinsically risky when in fact most are legally healthy.
“Our federal offices and civil servants of civil rights should not intimidate or discourage employers who work to advance these objectives,” said the letter.
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Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
