The head of the U.S. company for imposing office civil rights posted a social media call-out urging white males to come ahead if they have skilled race or intercourse discrimination at work.
“Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex? You may have a claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws,” U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chair Andrea Lucas, a vocal critic of DEI, wrote on X Wednesday night.
The post urged eligible employees to attain out to the company “as soon as possible” and referred customers to the company’s reality sheet on “DEI-related discrimination” for more info.
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chair Andrea Lucas has urged white males to come ahead if they ever skilled discrimination at work primarily based on their race or intercourse. REUTERS
Lucas’ post, considered hundreds of thousands of occasions, was shared about two hours after Vice President JD Vance posted an article he said “describes the evil of DEI and its consequences,” which also obtained hundreds of thousands of views.
Lucas responded to Vance’s post saying: “Absolutely right @JDVance. And precisely because this widespread, systemic, unlawful discrimination primarily harmed white men, elites didn’t just turn a blind eye; they celebrated it. Absolutely unacceptable; unlawful; immoral.”
She added that the EEOC “won’t rest until this discrimination is eliminated.”
Neither the company nor Vance responded immediately to requests for further remark.
Since being named performing chair of the EEOC in January, Lucas has been shifting the company’s focus to prioritize “rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination,” aligning with President Donald Trump’s own anti-DEI govt orders.
Trump named Lucas as the company’s chair in November.
Earlier this 12 months, the EEOC along with the Department of Justice issued two “technical assistance” paperwork trying to make clear what might represent “DEI-related Discrimination at Work” and offering steering on how employees can file complaints over such considerations.
The post Lucas made to social media came two hours after Vice President JD Vance posted a hyperlink to an article that “describes the evil of DEI and its consequences.” AP
The paperwork took broad purpose at practices such as coaching, worker useful resource teams and fellowship applications, warning such applications — relying on how they’re constructed — could run afoul of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination primarily based on race and gender.
Those paperwork have been criticized by former company commissioners as deceptive for portraying DEI initiatives as legally fraught.
David Glasgow, govt director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at the NYU School of Law, said Lucas’s newest social media posts display a “fundamental misunderstanding of what DEI is.”
“It’s really much more about creating a culture in which you get the most out of everyone who you’re bringing on board, where everyone experiences fairness and equal opportunity, including white men and members of other groups,” Glasgow said.
The Meltzer Center tracks lawsuits that are possible to have an effect on office DEI practices, including 57 circumstances of office discrimination.
Although there are cases in which it happens on a case-by-case foundation, Glasgow said he has not seen “any kind of systematic evidence that white men are being discriminated against.”
Lucas, a vocal critic of DEI, said Vance was proper and added under his post on X, “unlawful discrimination primarily harmed white men, elites didn’t just turn a blind eye; they celebrated it. Absolutely unacceptable; unlawful; immoral.” AP
He pointed out that Fortune 500 CEOs are overwhelmingly white males, and that relative to their share of the population, the demographic is overrepresented in company senior management, Congress, and beyond.
“If DEI has been this engine of discrimination against white men, I have to say it hasn’t really been doing a very good job at achieving that,” Glasgow said.
Jenny Yang, a former EEOC chair and now a associate at law firm Outten & Golden, said it is “unusual” and “problematic” for the head of the company to single out a explicit demographic group for civil rights enforcement.
“It suggests some sort of priority treatment,” Yang said.
“That’s not something that sounds to me like equal opportunity for all.”
On the other hand, the company has executed the reverse for transgender employees, whose discrimination complaints have been deprioritized or dropped utterly, Yang said.
The EEOC has restricted sources, and must accordingly prioritize which circumstances to pursue.
But treating prices in another way primarily based on employees’ identities goes against the mission of the company, she said.
“It worries me that a message is being sent that the EEOC only cares about some workers and not others,” Yang said.