US equality chief fired by Trump condemns ‘demonization of the term DEI’

Seven days after Donald Trump was inaugurated, Jocelyn Samuels received a message from the White House saying that the president – who had first appointed her as a commissioner to the US government agency tasked with fighting workplace discrimination – now wanted her gone.

Like so many other officials Trump has axed since retaking office, Samuels was informed she was being terminated from the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) because of her “support for radical Biden administration guidance, DEI initiatives and a refusal to defend women against extreme gender ideology”.

The order appeared to fly in the face of the legal precedent governing her appointment to the commission, but Samuels also sees her firing as part of a greater strategy to create a Republican majority on the five-member commission that will roll back protections for transgender employees in particular, and retaliate more generally against businesses that attempt to address inequity in their workforce.

“What I observed from the outside is that there is a real desire to decimate the federal government’s ability to provide the level of services that it has to the American people,” Samuels told the Guardian as she sat in a cafe earlier this week across the street from the White House, where her firing was orchestrated.

“With regard to the EEOC, I think that these terminations were in service of the administration’s agenda to eliminate whatever they mean by DEI programs, and to erase the existence of trans people, because those are issues that fall directly under the EEOC jurisdiction, to the extent that they result in discrimination in the workplace.”

A longtime civil rights lawyer who has been a senior official in the departments of justice and health and human services, Samuels was appointed to the commission during Trump’s first term, and then reappointed by Joe Biden.

On 27 January, she, along with fellow commissioner Charlotte Burrows and the EEOC’s general counsel, both Democratic appointees, received an email from the White House presidential personnel office, saying they “unsuitable to be members of this administration”, Samuels recalled.

The termination “makes a mockery of the whole structure of these independent agencies,” she said. “I do think that this was an unlawful action on his part, and it is a real disservice to workers across the country for me not to have been able to serve out my term.”

A Trump administration official described Samuels and Burrows as “far-left appointees with radical records of upending longstanding labor law, and they have no place as senior appointees in the Trump administration, which was given a mandate by the American people to undo the radical policies they created”.

Samuels is one of many targeted in the firing spree Trump embarked on after returning to power last month, which the president has justified as necessary to root out supporters of policies he opposes, such as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives supported by Biden.

The president has ordered the axing of the leaders of the US Coast Guard, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and 18 independent federal agency watchdogs, allowed Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” to attempt to entice millions of federal employees into quitting their jobs and tried to pause all government loans and grants. Democrats say the campaign is an attempt to remove dissenters and ensure a compliant federal bureaucracy, while his spending freeze and mass buyouts have faced setbacks in court.

The president has also gone after Democrats appointed to independent agency positions that are meant to be insulated from political interference. In addition to his dismissals from the EEOC, Trump fired three Democratic members of the Private Civil Liberties Oversight Board, a presidential advisory body, as well as a Democrat on the National Labor Relations Board, who this week filed a lawsuit alleging an “unprecedented and illegal” dismissal by the president. He is also attempting to fire the chair of the Federal Election Commission, who has thus far refused to leave her post.

Created by the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and tasked with enforcing protections against the discrimination of job applicants and employees, the five-member EEOC is intended to be bipartisan, with no more than three commissioners belonging to a sitting president’s party.

Among its tools is litigation against companies that it claims allow discrimination, including against transgender workers. Under Biden, the commission brought suits against a New York bar and restaurant where a transgender employee was told he “wasn’t a real man”, and a Michigan restaurant chain that allowed a transgender employee to be misgendered by a co-worker, then fired him and his colleagues when they complained.

Samuels’s term was not to expire until July of next year, and she expected to have “another 18 months on the commission, along with my fellow Democratic commissioners, to continue to advance our interpretations of the law”.

Instead, she was sent an email full of conservative buzzwords as justification for her dismissal. But Samuels says Trump and his acolytes have never spelled out what they mean by DEI, and instead believe they are using their dislike of it as cover for a regulatory offensive intended to stop all efforts to address inequity.

“I think that this demonization of the term DEI is really misrepresenting the nature of the important work that needs to be done to really create a level playing field,” Samuels said. “And my concern is that once there is a Republican majority on the EEOC, the commission will work to undermine employers’ ability to do this important work.”

With its commission in Republican hands, Samuels said the EEOC could roll back guidance that protects transgender workers from harassment, and rescind its interpretation of a federal law that female employees who seek abortions must be given accommodation by their employer. It may also actively take part in the Trump administration’s fight against DEI, by pursuing claims of discrimination against employers who embrace policies that favor workforce diversity, flipping the traditional mission of pursuing claims against employers who eschew diversity and discriminate against employees from underrepresented demographics.

The firing of Samuels and Burrows has left just a single Republican and Democratic commissioner each on the EEOC, robbing it of a quorum and limiting its functionality. Trump appointed the remaining Republican, Andrea Lucas, as acting chair, who, portending what Samuels fears, named as among her priorities “rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination” and “defending the biological and binary reality of sex”.

“There are plenty of race-neutral ways that employers can advance their commitment to diversity, but I think that a commission that thinks that even committing to that proactive work means that you are taking race into account in a way that will hurt white people, can do a lot of damage,” Samuels said.

And contrary to the White House’s accusation that she supports “extreme gender ideology” and failed to “defend women”, Samuels argues there is no conflict between women’s rights and transgender rights.

“Cisgender women are not harmed by combating failures to hire trans people or egregious misgendering or harassment of trans people,” Samuels said. “An assault on the rights of one is an assault on the rights of all.”

Samuels has considered suing over her dismissal, but is mindful of the greater legal peril that could bring. Such a case could wind up before the supreme court, where its conservative supermajority has recently shown a willingness to expand executive powers, including with last year’s ruling granting presidents immunity for their official acts. If the justices uphold Samuels’s dismissal, they could do so in a way that grants Trump and future presidents the explicit authority to fire members of independent bodies.

Such a decision “would be regrettable and a disservice to the functions served by these bipartisan agencies”, Samuels said

Source: US Politics - theguardian.com