The Trump administration has deployed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in its effort to seek retribution against corporate law firms.
The primary federal regulator of workplace discrimination has become a powerful tool in President Trump’s assault on some of the nation’s biggest law firms and is upending the agency’s traditional role in enforcing civil rights laws and upsetting its staff.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which Congress established roughly 60 years ago to enforce anti-discrimination laws, has for decades focused on ensuring that workers are not discriminated against based on their race, religion, age or sexual orientation.
But the Trump administration has been deploying the agency in its effort to seek retribution and extract concessions from corporate law firms, many of which the White House views as having been hostile to Mr. Trump in the past.
Last month, the agency began questioning the hiring practices of 20 of the country’s biggest law firms, claiming that their efforts to recruit Black and Hispanic lawyers and create a more diverse work force may have potentially discriminated against white candidates. It is part of Mr. Trump’s broad crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, which he has branded “illegal and immoral discrimination,” arguing that the focus on these initiatives has caused jobs to go to unqualified people.
Critics of D.E.I. liken it to the kind of race-conscious affirmative action college admission programs the Supreme Court has found to be unconstitutional. Analysts with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, have said D.E.I. is unlawful discrimination and inconsistent with a merit-based system of hiring.
But the way the E.E.O.C. has begun looking into the hiring practices at the law firms has raised alarm among some current and former employees that the commission is being weaponized to ratchet up the pressure on law firms seen as unfriendly to the White House, according to eight people briefed on the matter, who requested anonymity because they feared retaliation.