President Donald Trump’s top workplace civil rights official is specifically calling on white men to report race and sex discrimination against them.
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission acting chair Andrea Lucas posted a video on social media this month asking: “Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex?”
The agency, established under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, enforces federal anti-discrimination laws in hiring and in the workplace, where employers are prohibited from discriminating against an applicant or employee on the basis of race, religion, sex, skin color, national origin, age, disability or genetic information.
Lucas — a prominent critic of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts who opposes civil rights protections for transgender Americans — said white men “may have a claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws.”
“Contact EEOC as soon as possible,” she said in a video, which has been viewed nearly six million times. “EEOC is identifying, attacking and eliminating all forms of race and sex discrimination, including against white male applicants and employees.”
Her post follows a chaotic year for federal civil rights protections and enforcement under Trump’s administration as his new appointments to the Justice Department and EEOC take up his anti-DEI crusade.
Trump signed executive orders aimed at eliminating diversity efforts across the federal government and pressuring private companies and schools to do the same or risk criminal prosecution or the loss of federal funding and contracts.
He appointed Lucas as the agency’s acting chair in January and fired two Democratic commissioners on the five-member board, clearing the way for a Republican majority. The EEOC’s website now includes a page titled “What To Do If You Experience Discrimination Related to DEI at Work.”
Lucas is now “fully empowered” to eliminate “illegal discrimination” stemming from DEI and “anti-American bias,” she told The Washington Post.
She said her video reflects the agency’s effort to “correct underreporting” of forms of discrimination that she believes have been neglected, claiming that “for too long, many employees thought they weren’t the ‘right’ kind of plaintiff, that our civil rights laws only protected certain groups, rather than all Americans.”
A group of former EEOC and Department of Labor officials roundly rejected her characterization of civil rights enforcement and allegations of anti-white racism plaguing the workforce.
“Of course, federal law prohibits discrimination against white people and men — the law protects all employees from job discrimination based on any race or sex. But Chair Lucas’ video conveys the message that white men in particular are facing egregious employment discrimination and that it is a matter of national importance for the EEOC to devote its limited resources to this one group,” they wrote in a statement last week.
The chair’s video “lacks empirical support as a significant and widespread problem” while the agency diverts “scarce enforcement resources from well-documented and pervasive forms of workplace discrimination that harm millions of workers in America today,” they added.
Chai Feldblum, a former EEOC commissioner who was appointed by Barack Obama, called the video a “sad state of affairs for the American public, employers, employees and applicants for employment.”
Under the Trump administration’s directive and an agency now aligned with his commands, a white man who feels discriminated against because of a training program he found offensive or because a nonwhite person was hired could kick a federal investigation into gear with a complaint, according to Feldblum.
That can trigger additional legal actions, including federal lawsuits, while the person who “can trumpet it wide and far without any confidentiality restrictions,” she wrote.
The Justice Department is similarly leaning into Trump’s anti-DEI campaign. Federal prosecutors are reportedly turning to anti-fraud law to launch novel investigations into the use of diversity initiatives in hiring and promotion at major U.S. companies.
The civil probes are reportedly under the False Claims Act, which has traditionally been used to target fraudsters who have billed the government for work that was never performed or inflate the cost of services rendered.
DOJ’s Civil Rights Division is also pushing government attorneys to focus on removing trans women in sports and other so-called culture war issues fueling Trump’s anti-DEI agenda.
Former Trump attorney Harmeet Dhillon filed a barrage of attention-grabbing lawsuits on behalf of right-wing activists against gender-affirming healthcare and school policies and state and local laws designed to protect LGBT+ people across the country before she was nominated to lead the so-called “crown jewel” of the Justice Department.
Dhillon also supported efforts to reverse election results in states Trump lost in 2020.
She has since redirected the Civil Rights Division to investigate DEI and allegations of “anti-Christian bias.”
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