EEOC Commissioner: There Will Be More Challenges to Already Illegal DEI, Corporate Race Programs After SCOTUS College Ruling

On Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “America Reports,” Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Commissioner Andrea Lucas predicted that the Supreme Court’s ruling on racial preferences in college admissions will lead to an increased amount of challenges to already illegal corporate DEI programs and other methods of sneaking in race preferences.

Lucas said, “I think this is going to be a wake-up call for employers. Today is a time — the best time for lawyers to really take a look at the lawfulness of their corporate diversity programs. Even though many employers don’t use the word affirmative action, it’s rampant today, from ESG, to focuses on equity, pretty much everywhere, there’s a ton of pressure at the corporate 100 across corporate America to take race-conscious decision-making — race-conscious actions in employment law, and that’s been illegal and it’s still illegal.”

She added “I have noticed an increasing number of challenges to corporate DEI programs and I would expect that this decision is going to shine even more of a spotlight [on] how out of alignment some of those programs are. And to be clear, I’m not criticizing all diversity programs, it really depends on how they’re structured. But to the extent that they’re explicitly or implicitly taking race into decision-making for employment decisions, race-restricted internships, race-restricted mentoring, race-focused promotion decisions, etc. There [are] a host of employment decisions. If you are using race as any factor in your decision-making, you’re already violating the law, and I expect that you are going to have a rising amount of challenges as this sort of raises that issue back to people’s attention.”