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Major Civil Rights Organizations Challenge EEOC’s Unlawful Intimidation of Law Firms
WASHINGTON (March 26) – The National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), the National Partnership for Women and Families, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. and other major civil and workers’ rights groups are demanding the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) acting chair immediately cease her attempt to intimidate 20 prominent law firms over their diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
In a group of March 17 letters, EEOC Acting Chair Andrea Lucas improperly, and without any authority, requested the targeted law firms provide detailed information about their employment practices related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. On March 19, the EEOC then issued, under her direction, an informal guidance document that misleadingly cast doubt on the legality of these practices.
“An EEOC Commissioner, even the Chair, has no unilateral authority to demand the requested information and certainly does not have the power to change or reinterpret federal anti-discrimination law based on political whims,” the organizations said in a letter to Lucas, whom Trump appointed acting EEOC chair the day after he took office and on Tuesday renominated for a second five-year term. “Given your lack of authority, these actions appear to be intended to intimidate private employers and will sow confusion regarding the legality of these programs.”
Read the full letter from the civil rights groups here.
Along with NWLC, the National Partnership for Women & Families and the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, the other organizations who wrote to Lucas were: the American Civil Liberties Union; Equal Rights Advocates; Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; National Employment Law Project; and The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
“These letters inappropriately commandeer the agency’s bully pulpit to attempt to pressure these law firms into providing information they are not legally required to share,” the groups said. The letters also send a warning to all private businesses that the EEOC could target them next, even without any basis for investigation. The organizations urged Lucas to immediately withdraw her public letters and the informal guidance document.
They also urged the 20 law firms to “disregard the lawless attempts to intimidate them” and pushed them to adhere to their legal obligation to comply with federal nondiscrimination laws.