Stay up to date with our Politics newsletter, sent weekly.In 1966, the newly-established Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued a rule to tackle entrenched discrimination on the job.Every year, companies with a hundred or more workers would turn over to the government information about the race, ethnicity, sex and job categories of their employees.This EEO-1 data, as it's known, has helped the federal agency figure out where people of color and women are not getting hired or promoted.Over decades, the EEOC's work has led to settlements worth billions.Now, as part of a realignment of civil rights enforcement under President Trump, the EEOC is seeking to end its annual data collection while also getting rid of a 1979 regulation that allowed employers to take certain steps to address race and gender imbalances revealed by the data.Together, the moves would mark an about-face in the civil rights agency's efforts to fulfill its mission.Andrea Lucas, the Trump-appointed chair of the EEOC, did not respond to NPR's questions about the two proposals, which have been submitted to the White House for review.But in interviews and public remarks, Lucas has repeatedly warned that programs or policies aimed at helping specific groups, such as Black people or women, are unlawful under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 if they exclude others."Regardless of what has happened before, the way to stop discriminating based on race is to stop discriminating based on race.
The end.Full stop," Lucas said at the Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit earlier this month.
"I think that that's a more beautiful vision of our country, and I think it's consistent with the text of the statute."The 1979 regulation the EEOC seeks to rescind was issued with this very dilemma in mind: Can a company remedy discrimination by giving special consideration to those who were deprived of opportunities in the past?The answer back then was yes.The agency gave the go-ahead for mentoring programs ...