President Donald Trump on Tuesday appointed Andrea Lucas to be the acting chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and Lucas immediately pledged to crack down on “DEI-related discrimination.”
The agency, which was created by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, is responsible for protecting workers against discrimination based on a myriad of traits, including race, sex, national origin, age and disability. Under the Biden administration, sex discrimination was expanded to include pregnancy status and gender identity. Over the last 60 years, the EEOC has filed thousands of discrimination lawsuits against employers.
In its first days, the Trump administration has been on a tear dismantling the government’s diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Trump signed an executive order that bans the federal government from DEI practices like equity initiatives or environmental justice efforts, and also announced that he would fire federal workers whose job titles include “DEI.”
Lucas’ appointment to run the EEOC fits in with the administration’s anti-DEI stance — and would extend that mindset beyond the federal government and its workers.
“In recent years, this agency has remained silent in the face of multiple forms of widespread, overt discrimination,” Lucas said in a press release announcing her new role. “Consistent with the President’s Executive Orders and priorities, my priorities will include rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination; protecting American workers from anti-American national origin discrimination; defending the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights, including women’s rights to single‑sex spaces at work; protecting workers from religious bias and harassment, including antisemitism; and remedying other areas of recent under-enforcement.”
Liz Theran, the senior director of litigation for education and workplace justice at the National Women’s Law Center, told HuffPost that the types of “discrimination” Lucas called out give an ominous view of the EEOC’s goals.
“It’s obviously an oblique reference to this boogeyman of anti-majority discrimination,” Theran said. “How many people are experiencing discrimination at work for being American? It’s a dogwhistle for the far-right base.”
“Trump’s agenda for the EEOC is dangerous and anti-worker,” she added.
Lucas has been appointed to a six-month term, and she would then need to be renewed through a Senate confirmation process, according to The Washington Post.
The EEOC did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
Theran, who served assistant general counsel at the EEOC for two decades, including during Trump’s first term, said one issue stands out this time: “[The] administration’s attempt to weaponize the EEOC on behalf of the majority is front and center.”
Republicans have become obsessed with DEI, saying that programs that seek to make society inclusive for people of color, women, veterans, and the LGBTQ+ community unfairly harm other groups, like white men, or force companies and agencies to hire unqualified people.
They have twisted the meaning of the acronym that it now serves as a derogatory term for any member of a minority in a position of power. “DEI hires” have been to blame for everything from plane accidents to the deadly wildfires in Los Angeles, according to some on the right.
Project 2025, the sweeping federal government playbook created by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, appears to have influenced this new vision for the EEOC. The authors claim that the Obama and Biden administrations unfairly discriminated against conservative and religious workers, and call for the agency to “reorient” its goals toward accommodating discrimination claims based on disability, religion, and pregnancy. (It does, however, explicitly say protections should not be offered to workers who need abortion.)
These shifting priorities signal that not only does the Trump administration want to allow employers to discriminate against racial minorities and LGBTQ+ populations, but they want groups that have not been historically discriminated against, like white men, to be able to make claims of discrimination based on their identities.
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“This is a blatant attempt to close the door on historically disadvantaged workers and pull the ladder up behind them,” Theran said.