I Worked on Employment Law Until Trump Fired Me. Here’s the Truth About DEI.

Attacks on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs (widely referred to as DEIA) have been a central theme in the early days of the second Trump administration, including in a shameful and fact-free rant blaming a deadly plane crash on DEIA initiatives. But while the DEIA acronym appears in many recent executive orders and memoranda, they don’t offer a definition of the term. Maybe the vagueness is intentional, or maybe the people demonizing the term don’t actually understand it. Either way, the result has been widespread confusion.

Until the president fired me late at night on Jan. 27, I was general counsel at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The EEOC was created by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and its lawyers litigate hundreds of cases around the country each year to enforce the federal civil rights laws that bar discrimination in the workplace based on race, sex, religion, age, and disability. The recent spate of DEIA-related executive orders invoke these same civil rights laws, claiming that “illegal DEIA policies” violate them by discriminating based on race and sex.