Dive Brief:
- President Donald Trump on Monday renominated Andrea Lucas, acting chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, to a new five-year term at the civil rights agency expiring July 1, 2030, according to U.S. Senate records.
- Lucas, whom Trump named acting chair in January, said in a press release that if confirmed, she would work toward “restoring evenhanded enforcement of employment civil rights laws for all Americans.” Her current term is set to expire July 1.
- Should the Senate vote to confirm Lucas, EEOC would still be without a quorum thanks in part to Trump’s controversial dismissal of two Democratic commissioners whose terms had not yet expired. The move left three unoccupied seats on the five-member commission, with only Lucas and Democratic Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal remaining.
Dive Insight:
In the less than two months that have passed since Trump tapped Lucas to lead EEOC, the new acting chair has presided over a dramatic shift in the agency’s enforcement posture as well as its messaging to employers — fully in-line with the Trump administration’s broader approach to civil rights issues.
Lucas began by rolling back Biden-era EEOC initiatives meant to improve the inclusivity of agency processes, such as allowing internal employees to identify their pronouns using an app embedded in EEOC’s Microsoft systems and allowing people filing discrimination charges with the agency to use nonbinary gender marker and prefix options.
Lucas also said she would “defend the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights,” a move tied to Trump’s executive order directing agencies to nix all references to “gender ideology” and associated policies. Shortly thereafter, EEOC directed staff to halt processing of claims alleging sexual orientation- and gender identity-based discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and moved to abandon existing gender identity discrimination lawsuits it had filed on behalf of plaintiffs.
Meanwhile, EEOC has shown it may soon take the offensive against private-sector employers’ diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Lucas issued a series of letters last week to 20 large legal firms asking for details such as the firms’ application and selection criteria for diverse clerkship programs and their use of employee affinity groups. In a statement announcing the letters, the acting chair said “EEOC is prepared to root out discrimination anywhere it may rear its head, including in our nation’s elite law firms.”
It remains to be seen what shape EEOC’s enforcement against discriminatory DEI programs will take, but Lucas said in the March 25 press release that a portion of the work needed to restore “evenhanded” enforcement of civil rights laws “is simply clarifying longstanding civil rights rules that have been obscured by unequal enforcement in recent years.”
That may refer, at least partly, to the agency’s recent announcement outlining the prioritization of enforcement against anti-American workplace bias. EEOC inked a $1.4 million settlement with a Guam hotel and resort over allegations that the employer provided non-Japanese employees, including American-origin employees, with less favorable wages, benefits and other employment terms than similarly situated Japanese workers.
One day after the settlement’s announcement, Lucas put employers “on notice” about illegal preferences against employing American workers. “Unlawful bias against American workers, in violation of Title VII, is a large-scale problem in multiple industries nationwide,” she added.
Further clues might come from a pair of documents EEOC published on March 19 outlining which DEI programs and initiatives might be considered unlawful discrimination under federal civil rights laws. Among other things, EEOC said that the unlawful use of quotas or policies that seek a “balancing” of an employer’s workforce based on protected characteristics would be considered illegal.
While Lucas’ nomination is pending, there are still open legal questions regarding Trump’s dismissal of Democratic former Commissioners Charlotte Burrows and Jocelyn Samuels earlier this year. Burrows’ term had been set to expire in 2028, while Samuels’ had been set to expire in 2026. Their dismissals pose a challenge to decades-old U.S. Supreme Court precedent establishing Congress’ power to create independent boards and commissions whose members are protected from at-will removal by the president.
