It’s not surprising a national legal nonprofit would allege in late 2023 that NASCAR had a diversity problem: Of the 42 drivers on the entry list for the 2024 Daytona 500, for example, only one was Black and zero were women.
But that wasn’t the diversity issue that America First Legal (AFL)—a group founded by Stephen Miller, a senior Trump official and a mastermind of the infamous child-separation immigration policy—had in mind. Rather, in an 8-page letter sent to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) requesting a formal investigation, the conservative organization accused NASCAR of “ongoing, deliberate, and illegal discrimination against white, male Americans.”
It was one of at least 20 letters Miller’s group sent to the EEOC seeking the nonpartisan government agency investigate an employer’s diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) policies for discrimination against white, male, or heterosexual people. Other targets, deemed “woke corporations” by AFL, included Nordstrom, Major League Baseball, Tyson Foods, Anheuser-Busch, Morgan Stanley, and several major airlines.
The EEOC has not (yet) pursued lawsuits against these companies for the discrimination charges alleged by AFL, but that was the old EEOC—before Trump named Miller his deputy chief of staff for policy, fired two of four EEOC commissioners, and appointed an anti-DEIA enthusiast to be its acting chair. The new kids in town may very well use the complaints authored by Miller’s group as a blueprint for future, but meritless, EEOC charges.
In the last few weeks, the MAGA-fied EEOC has already added a unique code for DEIA-motivated discrimination to its internal complaint system; EEOC staff have been told to prioritize complaints from workers who allege they faced discriminated for being American-born or part of a non-minority group; and Trump’s new acting chair, Andrea Lucas, has sworn to prioritize “rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination.”
These efforts are seemingly designed to hijack the EEOC’s mission from one that aims to protect the equal rights of people who are marginalized, to one that seeks to punish companies for making modest efforts to level the playing field on their behalf.
“This administration is signaling a receptivity to challenges to DEIA programs that may encourage people who feel that they have been subject to discrimination as a result of those programs to seek to vindicate their rights through the EEOC,” Jocelyn Samuels, one of the EEOC Commissioners recently fired by Trump, told Mother Jones.
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