The head of the U.S. agency for enforcing workplace civil rights posted a social media call-out urging white men to come forward if they experienced race or sex discrimination at work.
"Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex? You may have a claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws," U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chair Andrea Lucas, a vocal critic of DEI, wrote on social media Wednesday evening. The post urged eligible workers to reach out to the agency "as soon as possible" and referred users to the agency's fact sheet on "DEI-related discrimination" for more information.
Lucas' post, viewed millions of times, was shared about two hours after Vice President JD Vance posted an article that he said "describes the evil of DEI and its consequences," which also received millions of views.
Lucas responded to Vance's post saying: "Absolutely right @JDVance. And precisely because this widespread, systemic, unlawful discrimination primarily harmed white men, elites didn't just turn a blind eye; they celebrated it. Absolutely unacceptable; unlawful; immoral." She added that the EEOC "won't rest until this discrimination is eliminated."
Andrea Lucas, nominee to be a member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, testifies June 18 during a Senate committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington.
Neither the agency nor Vance responded immediately to requests for additional comment.
Since she was named acting chair of the EEOC in January, Lucas shifted the agency's focus to prioritize "rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination," aligning with President Donald Trump's own anti-DEI executive orders. Trump named Lucas as the agency's chair in November.
This year, the EEOC and Department of Justice issued two "technical assistance" documents to clarify what might constitute "DEI-related Discrimination at Work" and provide guidance on how workers can file complaints over such concerns. The documents took broad aim at practices such as training, employee resource groups and fellowship programs, warning such programs — depending on how they're constructed — could run afoul of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race and gender.
Former agency commissioners criticized those documents as misleading for portraying DEI initiatives as legally fraught.
David Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at the NYU School of Law, said Lucas's latest social media posts demonstrate a "fundamental misunderstanding of what DEI is."
"It's really much more about creating a culture in which you get the most out of everyone who you're bringing on board, where everyone experiences fairness and equal opportunity, including white men and members of other groups," Glasgow said.
The Meltzer Center tracks lawsuits that are likely to affect workplace DEI practices, including 57 cases of workplace discrimination. Though there are instances in which it occurs on a case-by-case basis, Glasgow said he hasn't seen "any kind of systematic evidence that white men are being discriminated against."
He pointed out that Fortune 500 CEOs are overwhelmingly white men and, relative to their share of the population, the demographic is overrepresented in corporate senior leadership, Congress and beyond.
"If DEI has been this engine of discrimination against white men, I have to say it hasn't really been doing a very good job at achieving that," Glasgow said.
Jenny Yang, a former EEOC chair and now a partner at law firm Outten & Golden, said it is "unusual" and "problematic" for the head of the agency to single out a particular demographic group for civil rights enforcement. "It suggests some sort of priority treatment," she said. "That's not something that sounds to me like equal opportunity for all."
On the other hand, the agency has done the opposite for transgender workers, whose discrimination complaints were deprioritized or dropped completely, Yang said.
The EEOC has limited resources and must accordingly prioritize which cases to pursue, but treating charges differently based on workers' identities goes against the mission of the agency, she said. "It worries me that a message is being sent that the EEOC only cares about some workers and not others."
