The former EEOC commissioner, Jocelyn Samuels, shown on the right, the choice of President Trump during his first mandate to fulfill a Democratic seat at the Commission, is sworn in by the president of the EEOC, Janet Dhillon, on the left on the left , October 14, 2020.
US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
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US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
When Jocelyn Samuels learned by e-mail late in the evening of January 27 that she was withdrawn from her headquarters at the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, she was shocked.
She had heard rumbles that President Trump could try to avoid commissioners of independent agencies, but she did not think it would happen to her.
After all, the veteran lawyer for civil rights had worked for republican and democratic administrations. In addition, she had been Trump’s choice to fulfill a democratic seat at the Bipartite Commission during her first mandate.
“I have not hidden the opinions of my policies or the way I get a legal interpretation when I was interviewed by Trump’s White House in 2020,” said Samuels. “I think I exercised my responsibilities with integrity and competence and real attention to the rule of law.”
However, now, five years later, he was told that his “radical” opinions, including his position according to which diversity, equity and inclusion work are authorized under the law, make it unfit to serve.
The face led Samuels to a conclusion.
“I think it is the prospects of this administration that have changed and have become much more radical,” she said.
Since his return to the White House three weeks ago, Trump has taken so many legally questionable measures to implement his program as the abolition of Samuels, as well as that of the former president of the EEOC, Charlotte Burrows, N ‘did not trigger the widespread public response that it could be quieter. times.
But people working in civil rights warn that layoffs are part of a large attempt to dismantle the infrastructure to combat systemic inequalities in America.
An agency established to combat discrimination
The EEOC was created by Congress 60 years ago to enforce title VII of the 1964 civil rights law. With the headquarters in Washington, DC, and offices on the ground throughout the country, its Mission is to eliminate illegal discrimination in the workplace.
Every year, the EEOC investigates tens of thousands of discrimination complaints, facilitating mediation in certain cases and taking employers before the courts.
“The EEOC as an institution plays an essential role in the progression and the justification of the rights of those who have been the subject of discrimination – a role that individuals simply cannot constitute by hiring their own lawyers and in Taking up their own lawsuits, “said Samuels.
Historically, the agency has favored the protection of vulnerable workers and people from poorly served communities.
Samuels fears that concentration will end, while Trump takes his repression against diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) in all corners of the federal government and beyond.
Already, the Trump administration has interrupted the work related to the DEIA throughout the government, revoked a 1965 decree aimed at preventing discrimination in terms of employment by federal entrepreneurs and ordered government websites, among others, Government websites have been rubbed with the content of “sex ideology”. Federal employees were invited to withdraw pronouns from their email signatures.
The acting president of the EEOC, Andrea Lucas, whom Trump also named the commission in 2020, has already ended the use of the non -binary “x” “x” option on the forms used to file compliance discrimination.
And much greater changes are in advance.
“The elections have consequences”
“I think the elections have consequences, and new administrations have different priorities,” said Samuels. “I think that what is happening today is an effort to avoid the foundations of EEOC policy … and the nature of the work that he is able to undertake in a way that is completely without previous.”
Currently, EEOC cannot make major political modifications. With only two remaining commissioners, he has no quorum.
But with vacant seats that Trump can fulfill, the Commission should soon win a republican majority. At this point, Samuels awaits an upheaval.
Lucas has promised to cancel parts of the EEOC harassment guidelines which clearly show that trans people are protected against harassment based on gender identity.
Samuels considers that advice as an essential tool to protect people who have undergone blatant treatment at work, “whether by descent or ask invasive questions about the genitals of employees, or to say that people are not No real men if they are trans men, or call people ‘it.’ “”
Lucas, on the other hand, argues that the advice endangered women by ignoring “biological realities”.
“The same agency as in the 1960s and 70s was fighting to ensure that women had the right to their own toilets, changing rooms, dormitories and other sex facilities – and established that it would be sex discrimination not To provide such installations reserved for women – women have betrayed by attacking their sex rights in the workplace, “said Lucas In a statement last month. “It must end.”
The decision to cancel the part of the gender identity of directives could disagree with the Supreme Court. In 2020, the Court ruled: “It is impossible to discriminate a person to be homosexual or transgender without discriminating this person on the basis of sex.”
A scary effect on employers
Many also fear that the Trump EEOC will adopt a 2025 project proposal to end the requirement that employers of 100 or more employees provide the government annual data on breed, ethnicity, sex and employment category of their workers. Without data, the EEOC may not be able to prove that hiring or promotion practices of an employer are discriminatory.
“I am deeply worried that the EEOC is no longer an agency that undertakes to protect and confirm the rights of vulnerable workers, and will rather be an obstacle to their ability to be protected from discrimination,” said Samuels.
Even before the major policy changes are finalized, Samuels plans that many employers will cease all kinds of efforts to combat obstacles to opportunities, even things like mentoring programs that are open to everyone.
“Because the administration did not offer any description of the types of initiatives it sweeps the Dei section, employers can be refrigerated,” she said.
She fears that the executive decrees of Trump, which include many references to “illegal dei and Deia policies” and a direct call to private sector employers to examine their own practices, can lead certain companies to inadvertently rape the anti-discrimination laws .
For example, federal law requires employers to make adaptations for employees and disabled candidates, unless these adaptations require excessive difficulties.
“The aggravated accessibility with this Trump Dei, as if they were awakened ideological terms that have no relation to legal requirements, I think employers lead employers on the way to the garden to believe that comply with their accommodation obligations is discretionary, “she says.
A fight to him
After a career that fights on behalf of other people, Samuels now weighs whether to challenge his own dismissal to court.
“I will think very hard at the next appropriate steps,” she said.
Ninety years ago, the The Supreme Court ruled that the presidents do not have the power to cause fires from independent agencies.
Thanks to several layoffs, Trump sets up opportunities for the courts to reconsider this decision.
Already, Gwynne Wilcox, a democratic member of the National Council for Labor Relations who was dismissed by Trump the same evening as Samuels, continued Trump, citing the language in national labor relations law which allows the president to withdraw the members of the board of directors only for negligence of duty or embezzlement to power.
“We hope that the courts will support the longtime protections of the law for agency independence,” said Wilcox lawyer Deepak Gupta in a statement.
