Chair Andrea Lucas wants to return the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to its roots in the civil rights movement, after previous chairs ignored discrimination that didn’t advance a diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda, she says.
“My goal is complete and absolute reform of the agency to go back to principles that were good and right in the early part of the civil rights movement,” Lucas, President Donald Trump’s appointee to the commission, told The Daily Signal.
The EEOC is an executive branch agency created by Congress through Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
While recent chairs have treated the agency as unaccountable to the president, according to Lucas, both the EEOC’s Office of Legal Counsel and the Department of Justice have repeatedly recognized the commission as part of the executive branch.
Lucas described previous chairs as “hypocritical” for governing as if the commission has a will of its own.
“For decades, since the late ’70s when we retained authority over the Age Discrimination Employment Act, it’s been very clear that we are an executive branch agency,” she said. “[Previous chairs] haven’t wanted to message that, but that’s been the reality, so I would say that my view is consistent with decades of precedent.”
Lucas’ return to precedent has sparked criticism from the old guard who accuse her politicization of the agency.
“What we are seeing now is a real politicization of the priorities of the agency, and a disregard for the law,” former Commissioner and Chair Jenny Yang told The New York Times.
But Lucas says Democrats have politicized the agency for years, and now it’s time for conservatives to enforce their vision of civil rights law.
“Democrats have done whatever they liked with the agency over the various decades, but it can’t be that only Democrats get to have policy positions or enforcement positions or policy priorities,” she said. “The American people elected the president, and we are an executive branch agency and we are going to be responsive to that.”
“When a Democrat is in power, they will do with the agency as they will, but right now we have a Republican president,” she said, “and we’re gonna execute his priorities.”
For example, the commission is now investigating allegations of discrimination against white males, a demographic Lucas says it typically “left behind” in previous civil rights conversations.
“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,” Lucas said in a December video.
Chairs in recent decades have misinterpreted anti-discrimination law, acting like it only applies to certain groups, Lucas says, but the law is colorblind.
“It’s always been group neutral,” she said. “It’s always applied to white men as well as every other iteration of sex and race.”
Lucas believes there’s no good kind of discrimination. The idea that present and future discrimination remedy the past is an “ugly view of the world” that Lucas says she doesn’t want for her two young daughters.
“Our view is a better, more moral one, one that says that people are created equal, and there’s no good form of discrimination,” she said. “We’re not just gonna pick and choose winners and losers related to race discrimination. We’re gonna say every form of race discrimination is wrong.”
Lucas put this view into action on Wednesday, filing a subpoena enforcement action that required Nike to produce information related to allegations that the company discriminated against white workers. This is one of the first public actions Trump’s commission has taken in DEI-related discrimination cases.
The commission is hoping to send a message that civil rights are for everyone, Lucas said.
“There’s no diversity carve-out to discrimination law,” she said. “It doesn’t matter how you label something, the words DEI don’t make something magically ‘good.’ There’s no good form of race discrimination. It’s always wrong, and we’re committed to robust enforcement of those laws under our leadership.”
