Civil rights leaders and elected officials are seething after President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders to eliminate DEI federal programs and decades-old enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Advocates and legal experts say one order, which revokes the enforcement of equal employment opportunity laws, also known as Title VII under the Civil Rights Act, will have a chilling effect.
“We got a lot of people who are going to lose their jobs,” said Dr. Mary Frances Berry, a former chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, appointed by President Bill Clinton, and professor emerita at the University of Pennsylvania.
On Tuesday, President Trump signed an order revoking decades-old executive orders signed by Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon that established enforcement of anti-bias measures in federal employment and contracting related to race, sex, religion, and national origin under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Trump order also revokes orders signed by President Barack Obama enforcing diversity promotion in the national security workforce and the overall federal workforce. Trump also directed all federal diversity, equity, and inclusion staff to be put on paid leave by the end of the day and eventually be laid off.
Dr. Berry points out that the need for anti-bias and diversity mechanisms for employment in the federal workforce has always existed, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, because workers who were not white were simply overlooked. “It was the culture,” she told theGro. “Taxpayers pay for contracts, and everybody has the right — any kind of taxpayer — to see to it that they … get a fair look.”
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was established by Congress to enforce the anti-bias employment measures of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. For years, the agency has been tasked with investigating and prosecuting cases of workplace discrimination. It also requires employers to report data on their employees, including their race or ethnicity.
Trump’s pick to lead the EEOC, Andrea Lucas, has made clear one of her top priorities is to root out DEI in both the public and private sectors.
Lucas told Fox News that she would restore “evenhanded enforcement of employment civil rights laws for all Americans. In recent years, this agency has remained silent in the face of multiple forms of widespread, overt discrimination.” She added, “We must reject the twin lies of identity politics: that justice is measured by group outcomes and that civil rights exist solely to remedy harms against certain groups.”
But when experts and advocates hear arguments from Trump and his administration that DEI should be replaced with “merit-based” outcomes, they see an attempt to justify the concept of reverse racism or “anti-white” discrimination — a premise they reject.
“Programs that promote an inclusive workforce ensure that the rules are applied evenly to everyone, plus they help build a federal government that looks like the diverse population it serves,” said Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees. “The federal government has the lowest gender and racial pay gaps of all employers, precisely because employment decisions are made based on one’s ability to do the work and not on where they went to school or who they supported in the last election.”
Dr. Alvin Tillery, director of the Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy at Northwestern University, says Trump’s orders on DEI are “problematic” for a host of reasons.
“It means essentially that our federal government is giving up on mitigating bias against racial minorities, women, LGBTQ, populations, disabled,” Tillery told theGrio, adding, “It’s going to drive everybody’s skills down.”
The political science professor also called out Republicans’ attempt to differentiate the word “equity” from “equality.”
“When you tamp down the use of equity language in your administrative processes, they’re really…trying to allow active discrimination to come back into play,” Tillery argued. “These are all things meant to put Black people and other people of color back into a racial caste system where discrimination against them was legal. This is his first step toward that.”
Jin Hee Lee, director of strategic initiatives at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, told theGrio that Trump is “essentially turning our equal protection and anti-discrimination laws on their head.”
“[DEI] or any other efforts to advance equity are necessary and laudable efforts to make sure that unfair barriers do not prevent anyone from accessing opportunities and achieving success,” said Lee. Contrary to arguments made by the Trump administration, she noted we “already have civil rights and anti-discrimination laws to address any concerns about discrimination.”
Lee said it’s ironic that Black Americans and other minorities who have “historically faced discrimination” now have “the burden of proving that discrimination under existing law.”
“However, in one fell swoop, President Trump has unilaterally declared that people who have not historically faced discrimination do not similarly have to meet that burden,” she argued. “Rather, he is suggesting that any effort to address ongoing inequities is itself discrimination. That reflects a dangerous and cynical view of the United States by cementing preexisting inequalities and halting any progress towards a true multiracial democracy.”
Lee added, “We should not normalize what President Trump and his administration [are] aiming to do with these executive orders.”
Dr. Berry, the former chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, told theGrio that given the Supreme Court’s ruling on race-based affirmative action in college admissions and conservatives pointing to that ruling to argue other cases of so-called discrimination against white Americans, civil rights leaders and elected leaders should have already been prepared to push back.
“We’re a day late and a dollar short,” she said. “It’s not a time for just either going in the corner and crying or a time for being mad … none of that is going to help.”
Berry suggested that Black supporters who are close to Trump — whom “he’s been very appreciative of” — should utilize their influence and proximity to the president to “come up with some strategy to get a sort of compromise.” She added, “They ought to be utilized by the people who want to do the right thing.”
Several civil rights leaders came together on Wednesday for an in-person “Demand Diversity: Emergency Session” roundtable organized by the National Urban League and its president, Marc Morial, in reaction to President Trump’s anti-DEI orders.
“We must recognize that we are a new democracy that we have not always lived up to our ideals, and the attack on diversity, equity and inclusion is an attempt to restore white nationalism,” said Janai Nelson, Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
Nelson said LDF is representing several civil rights groups, including the National Urban League, to take legal action against the Trump administration. The civil rights lawyer called President Trump’s actions an “assault on core principles of our democracy.”
She said Black and brown communities “must reclaim the meaning of the 14th Amendment,” which has been successfully used by white litigants in recent years to unravel racial equity programs in both the federal government and private sector. “
“We’ve seen repeated assaults on this anchor of our multiracial democracy,” said Nelson. “We know that following that path will only lead us to a place of division and destruction.”