Trump Administration Tells State Regulators It Won't Back Some Discrimination Claims

New York Times

6 days ago

The Trump administration is making it harder for state and local agencies to enforce certain workplace discrimination laws, another step in its efforts to strip away longstanding civil rights protections for minority groups.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the nation's primary regulator of workplace discrimination, pays state and local civil rights agencies to process and investigate many discrimination claims under work-sharing agreements.
But in a memo sent to those agencies last week, the E.E.O.C. said it would stop paying them for claims involving transgender workers or those based on what is known as disparate impact, which relies on statistical outcomes to prove discrimination. The memo, which was viewed by The New York Times, said the policy was retroactive to Jan. 20, when Mr. Trump took office.
That loss of federal resources will make it harder for state and local agencies to investigate these claims. Legal experts say the policy is likely to be challenged in courts and fits into the Trump administration's efforts to chip away at civil rights law.
'They are consistently eroding the protections from the 1964 Civil Rights Act and other foundational civil rights laws in this country, and undermining the rights of particular communities,' said Maya Raghu, a director at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, an advocacy group.
The E.E.O.C. declined to comment on the memo, which was dated May 20.
While presidents do not have the authority to unilaterally change civil rights laws, the Trump administration has used executive orders to chart a new path on enforcement. The memo said the directive to state and local agencies was consistent with two of Mr. Trump's executive orders — one that asserted that the federal government recognizes only two sexes, male and female; and another that ordered federal agencies to halt their use of 'disparate-impact liability.'
In workplace discrimination cases, disparate-impact tests are used to determine whether an employer's policy that appears neutral on its face disadvantages a particular group of people. Legal experts say that the test is one of the most critical tools for prosecuting civil rights discrimination.
'Disparate-impact theory is a really important mechanism for rooting out discrimination and inequality,' said Stacy Hawkins, a professor at Rutgers Law School who specializes in employment law.
The E.E.O.C. has emerged as a key enforcer of President Trump's agenda.
Under Andrea Lucas, the acting chair who was appointed by Mr. Trump, the agency has already dismissed discrimination cases it previously filed on behalf of transgender employees, and it has investigated law firms for their D.E.I. policies.
The E.E.O.C. allocated $31.5 million to state and local civil rights agencies last year. Those agencies help process about two-thirds of the tens of thousands of discrimination claims the E.E.O.C. receives each year.
State and city agencies are still required by local laws to enforce claims based on transgender discrimination or disparate impact, but those who rely on the E.E.O.C. for a significant portion of their budgets, the policy change will hinder the ability to fully process or investigate these claims.
The Maine Human Rights Commission, for example, receives nearly a third of its funding from the E.E.O.C., according to a spokesperson. For bigger states, the percentage of funding tends to be smaller. New York and California receive roughly 5 percent of their funding from the E.E.O.C., according to officials from those states' agencies.
'We are deeply disappointed that the E.E.O.C. has decided that it will no longer support investigations of claims involving discrimination based on gender-identity and disparate-impact discrimination,' New Jersey's attorney general, Matthew J. Platkin, a Democrat, said in an emailed statement.
The E.E.O.C., established by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to enforce anti-discrimination laws, has a long history of bringing claims based on disparate impact, even under the first Trump administration. In 2018, the agency secured a $3.2 million settlement from the railroad company CSX Transportation over strength tests it required as part of its job applications, which the agency said ended up disproportionately excluding women, a protected class under civil rights law.
In 2012, the E.E.O.C. began processing complaints of gender-identity and sexual orientation discrimination. In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that gay and transgender employees were protected against discrimination under the landmark civil rights law. Since that ruling, the agency has processed thousands of such cases including 3,000 last year.
Because of the agency's new policy, the number of such cases that lead to investigations is likely to shrink drastically. Jocelyn Samuels, who was a Democratic commissioner at the agency until Mr. Trump fired her a few days into his second term, said she worried that the E.E.O.C's memo signaled to state and local agencies that they should prioritize the president's executive orders over the Civil Rights Act.
The result may lead local agencies 'to de-emphasize or ignore' cases claiming gender-identity or disparate-impact discrimination. Such an outcome, Ms. Samuels added, would deprive people of the 'tools that the government can bring to bear in enforcing the law and vindicating their rights.'