President Donald Trump this week revoked an executive order aimed at banning discrimination by federal contractors and subcontractors as part of his sweeping effort to crack down on federal diversity programs.
The White House said in a memo Wednesday that the order signed a day earlier "protects the civil rights of all Americans and expands individual opportunity by terminating radical DEI preferencing in federal contracting and directing federal agencies to relentlessly combat private sector discrimination."
The revoked order had required "affirmative action and prohibits federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin,” according to a summary by the Department of Labor. It was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat, and initially covered government employees but was later narrowed to contractors.
Trump's order on Tuesday also revoked executive actions by Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama that sought to further promote diversity and inclusion in hiring across the federal government.
Trump said in his order that the diversity efforts "violate the text and spirit of our longstanding Federal civil-rights laws" and "undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system."
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The White House memo described Trump's order as "the most important federal civil rights measure in decades."
"It terminates 'diversity, equity, and inclusion' (DEI) discrimination in the federal workforce, and in federal contracting and spending," the memo said.
While the order is focused on the federal level, it also has implications for the private sector. It calls for the U.S. attorney general to work with other agencies and submit a report by May "containing recommendations for enforcing Federal civil-rights laws and taking other appropriate measures to encourage the private sector to end illegal discrimination and preferences, including DEI."
The report should focus on the "most egregious and discriminatory DEI practitioners in each sector of concern," the order says, and should include a "strategic enforcement plan," including the possibility of civil rights litigation.
"As a part of this plan, each agency shall identify up to nine potential civil compliance investigations of publicly traded corporations, large non-profit corporations or associations, foundations with assets of 500 million dollars or more, State and local bar and medical associations, and institutions of higher education with endowments over 1 billion dollars," the order says.
The memo suggests that effort will be focused on corporations and colleges.
"In the private sector, many corporations and universities use DEI as an excuse for biased and unlawful employment practices and illegal admissions preferences, ignoring the fact that DEI’s foundational rhetoric and ideas foster intergroup hostility and authoritarianism," the memo said.
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In another executive order Monday, Trump directed an end to DEI programs within the government. On Tuesday, his administration ordered all federal employees in DEI roles to be placed on paid leave starting Wednesday.
A memo from the Office of Personnel Management asked federal agencies to submit a written plan for dismissing employees in DEI roles by Jan. 31.
Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union that represents hundreds of thousands of federal workers, said Tuesday that the "federal government already hires and promotes exclusively on the basis of merit."
He called Trump's action a “smokescreen for firing civil servants, undermining the apolitical civil service, and turning the federal government into an army of yes-men loyal only to the president, not the Constitution.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Kelley's remarks.
