Risk Management

Civil rights groups file suit against Trump diversity order

Judy Greenwald

October 30, 2020 Reprints

Employment Practices Regulation More + Less -

Two civil rights groups filed suit against President Trump, the Department of Labor and U.S. Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia on Thursday challenging the president’s diversity training executive order.

Some observers have said the Sept. 22 executive order, which forbids employee training by the federal government and federal contractors and subcontractors that addresses unconscious racist or sexual bias, will upend many companies’ diversity training.

The litigation filed by the New York-based National Urban League and the Washington-based National Fair Housing Alliance, which seeks class-action status, asks that the order be declared “unlawful and invalid,” according to the complaint, National Urban League, National Fair Housing Alliance v. Donald J. Trump, Eugene Scalia, U.S. Dept. of Labor.

It charges that Executive Order 13950, which it says is unconstitutional, “is an extraordinary and unprecedented act by the Trump Administration to undermine efforts to foster diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

“The Order strikes at the heart of those critical efforts by government and nongovernmental actors – including training and other forms of private speech in the workplace – to eradicate race and sex stereotyping and other continuing manifestations of entrenched discrimination and bias against people of color, women, and LGBTQ individuals,” said the complaint, which also describes the executive order as an “exercise of authoritarian thought-and-speech-control.”

A spokesman for the Department of Labor could not be reached for comment.