Dive Brief:
- President Donald Trump signed multiple executive orders into effect Monday with the aim of dismantling the Biden administration’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts within the context of the federal workforce.
- One of the orders rescinded former President Joe Biden’s 2023 order that required each government agency to create an equity team and created an overarching federal DEI steering committee to oversee DEI efforts. A second order directed agencies and federal contractors to end all DEI and diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs, policies, offices and positions “under whatever name they appear.” A third order eliminated consideration of job candidates’ commitment to gender identity or equity as a consideration from the federal hiring process.
- A fourth executive order recognizes two sexes, male and female, as “biological reality.” In a statement Monday, the White House said Trump’s orders seek to “end the onslaught of useless and overpaid DEI activists buried into the federal workforce” and “protect women from radical gender ideology.”
Dive Insight:
Trump promptly axed federal DEI programs after repeatedly promising to do so in the run-up to November’s presidential election. The newly inaugurated president could undo even more Biden-era DEI regulations and executive actions in the weeks and months to come.
Trump has already rescinded Biden’s 2021 order directing federal agencies to review anti-discrimination regulations and harmonize them with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 decision holding that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. And others, such as the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s workplace harassment guidance — which has already has been challenged in court — could be on the chopping block.
Trump named Republican EEOC Commissioner Andrea Lucas as the agency’s chair Monday. Lucas disapproved of EEOC’s harassment guidance last April in part because she disagreed with an example the guidance said would amount to harassment outlawed by Title VII; in the example, an employer denied use of sex-segregated facilities consistent with a person’s gender identity, and permitted repeated and intentional use of names or pronouns inconsistent with a person’s gender identity.
Relatedly, Trump signed an executive order Monday instituting a regulatory freeze and requiring agencies to consider postponing the effective date of rules published in the Federal Register “for the purpose of reviewing any questions of fact, law, and policy that the rules may raise.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
During his previous administration, Trump issued a memo prohibiting federal agencies and contractors from holding certain training programs focused on race. Biden revoked this training prohibition on Day 1 of his administration, but Trump’s new executive order ending federal DEI programs requires the Office of Personnel Management, with the assistance of the U.S. attorney general, to “review and revise, as appropriate, all existing Federal employment practices, union contracts, and training policies or programs to comply with this order.”
Monday’s executive orders come after a slew of U.S. corporations had already rolled back their own DEI goals and initiatives — mostly in response to pressure from anti-DEI activists. But this trend is not universal, sources previously told HR Dive, and efforts to rebrand and refocus DEI initiatives are already underway at some organizations.