House Oversight Committee Republicans sent a letter to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Friday demanding information about the commission’s approach to ensuring the enforcement of existing laws prohibiting racially discriminatory policies in the workplace, as DEI efforts have leeched into recruiting, hiring, and promotion decisions in many companies.
“As the federal agency responsible for enforcing federal laws against illegal racial discrimination in all types of work situations, it is critical that EEOC is taking all available measures to prevent and end unlawful employment practices that discriminate on the basis of an individual’s race or color,” wrote Committee chairman James Comer and subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs Pat Fallon in a letter to EEOC chair Charlotte Burrows, obtained exclusively by National Review.
The letter requests all documents and communications from January 1, 2023, to present “containing any enforcement guidance related to Title VII’s prohibition on employment practices that discriminate on the basis of an individual’s race or color prepared for or disseminated to any covered employer.”
Additionally, the committee asks for all documents and communications containing any internal training materials for EEOC officials relating to enforcement of Title VII, as well as documents and communications containing any numerical accounting of enforcement actions by EEOC related to, whether in whole or in part, Title VII.
Finally, Comer asks the agency to turn over all materials related to or referencing the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Comer also requests a staff-level briefing on the issue “as soon as possible, but no later than March 8” and gives the agency a March 15 deadline for turning over communications.
The letter comes after EEOC Commissioner Andrea Lucas warned last summer, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action in college admissions practices, that the decision could serve as a warning to U.S. companies adopting “increasingly popular race-conscious corporate initiatives.”
Lucas warned companies to “to take a hard look at their diversity programs” and said “companies seriously err if they evaluate their risk under federal employment law by mistakenly referring to (now outdated) standards for higher education admissions which had approved of diversity-motivated affirmative action,” particularly as Title VII includes language that explicitly bans racial discrimination in the workplace.
Burrows, who oversees a Democratic majority at the EEOC, released a statement in the wake of the Court’s decision saying it “not address employer efforts to foster diverse and inclusive workforces,” and that “[i]t remains lawful for employers to implement diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs that seek to ensure workers of all backgrounds are afforded equal opportunity in the workplace.”
Meanwhile, state attorneys general have put Fortune 100 executives on alert that “companies that engage in racial discrimination should and will face serious legal consequences.”
The attorneys general said that if a company “previously resorted to racial preferences or naked quotas to offset its bigotry, that discriminatory path is now definitively closed” in the wake of the Court’s affirmative action decision and that companies must “overcome [their] underlying bias and treat all employees, all applicants, and all contractors equally, without regard for race.”
The group goes on to list several examples of unlawful discrimination, including “explicit racial hiring quota[s]” and preferences to contractors with diverse staff or minority leadership.