In more great news for Americans who are sick and tired of seeing California get away with smugly pushing woke, anti-American policies, the Trump Administration’s Department of Justice has launched a new legal blitz against the state over allegedly racially discriminatory practices used to support “racial equity” policies.
As background, while DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) policies were long the rage in America following the Civil Rights Act, particularly in the Obama years and decade since, the Trump Administration’s DOJ, particularly the Civil Rights Division of it, has taken a different line and demanded that companies and institutions stop using race in their analyses of candidates, including to support diversity.
So, the DOJ now has free rein to go after California, as it is doing, for allegedly using racial discrimination to support DEI policies for hiring at the California EPA and the related Air Resources Board. In a letter fired off by DOJ Civil Rights Division head Harmeet Dhillon, the DOJ alleges that the policies discriminated on the basis of race and sex to support equity.
Beginning its press release on the matter, the DOJ alleged, “The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has opened an investigation into the California Environmental Protection Agency (CAL EPA), including the California Air Resources Board (CARB), to determine whether it may be engaged in employment practices that discriminate based on race, sex, color, and national origin.”
Continuing, the DOJ noted where the equity analysis comes into play, noting that everything from hiring to advancement in the two organizations appears to have been race-based. It said, “In publicly available guidance documents, CAL EPA highlights ‘hiring, promotion and retention practices and policies’ that indicate it may be using protected characteristics to ‘advance racial equity.’”
Continuing, it noted how the internal organization within the bureaucracy had a littany of policies meant to do exactly that, saying, “Further, CARB, a division of CAL EPA, appears to use these policies to engage in discriminatory employment practices in its ‘Racial Equity Framework,’ which aims to advance race-based decision-making within the agency.”
So, now the Civil Rights Division is going to legal war with California, accusing the state of violating the Civil Rights Act to support its equity beliefs. The press release provided: “The Civil Rights Division’s Employment Litigation Section is investigating whether the California Environmental Protection Agency is engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination based on race, sex, and other protected characteristics, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended.”
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Commenting on the situation, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon noted that states and their agencies will no longer be able to get away with racial discrimination, even if it’s being used to support “equity,” saying, “Race-based employment practices and policies in America’s local and state agencies violate equal treatment under the law.”
Concluding, she noted that those organizations that go ahead and do so anyway will face not just scrutiny, but severe legal consequences that punish them for it. She said, “Agencies that unlawfully use protected characteristics as a factor in employment and hiring risk serious legal consequences.”
Watch Dhillon comment on the similarly nasty situation inside Minnesota here: