Complying With the Attack on DEI: Why History, Data, and Justice Demand We Resist
- Dr. Sharon Washington
- Sep 16
- 6 min read
September 15, 2025 Dr Sharon G.E. Washington
Recent headlines are clear: complying with the Trump administration’s latest crackdown on DEI isn’t just bad for equity—it could be legally dangerous. As the Yahoo article “Complying with Trump Administration’s Attack on DEI Could Get Employers into Legal Trouble” lays out, employers are being pressured to dismantle or neuter programs designed to reduce bias, support underrepresented employees, and ensure equitable outcomes.
But DEI and similar efforts did not arise in a vacuum. They are not about conferring unearned advantages on undeserving groups. They are responses to centuries of systemic barriers, legal discrimination, and persistent disparities—barriers that persist and, if left unchallenged, will reemerge in full force.
Historical Foundation: Why DEI Was (and Is) Needed
Civil Rights legislation: The Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII, and other landmark laws still guard against overt discrimination, but their passage did not erase the subtler, structural impediments to equality.
Executive Order 11246 (1965): required federal contractors to take affirmative action in hiring—recognizing that equal opportunity demands not just prohibitions on discrimination, but proactive remedies.
Health equity reports: The Heckler Report (1985) documented deep health disparities for racial and ethnic minorities, which led to the creation of the HHS Office of Minority Health. Subsequent major studies like Unequal Treatment (2003) confirmed that even when access is equal, outcomes are not.
These historical steps show a consistent pattern: where structural inequities exist—and they do—programs like DEI are (or have been) among the few institutional tools that can help to level the field.
What We’re Seeing Now: The Backlash and Its Mechanics
Key Dates & Documents Dismantling DEI
EO 14151 (Jan 20, 2025): Orders federal agencies to terminate DEI/DEIA programs and scrub related language. The White House+1
EO 14173 (Jan 21, 2025): Revokes EO 11246 (1965) and winds down federal contractor affirmative-action requirements; DOL initiated reg rescission July 1, 2025. DOL+1
EEOC (March 19, 2025) technical assistance: Warns certain DEI practices (e.g., affinity group limits, selection preferences) can violate Title VII. EEOC+1
Why abandoning DEI can backfire legally: Legal analysts and news outlets flag increased discrimination-risk if guardrails/training are gutted. Reuters
Recent political moves make clear that this is more than rhetoric:
Executive Order 14151 (Jan 2025) mandates the termination of all DEIA (“diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility”) programs by federal agencies, removal of DEI staff, and purging of DEI‐related language from federal websites.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) under the current administration has signaled that some types of diversity training or affinity group policies could be illegal. Companies are being probed about DEI practices and policies, potentially opening them up to legal risk.
Universities have already responded: offices of DEI are being shut down, programs relocated or rebranded, and DEI‐language removed from corporate or institutional websites.
These are not benign or symbolic moves. They directly threaten the infrastructure built over decades to address inequities in employment, education, healthcare, and beyond.
Why the Risk Isn’t Just Theory: What Data & Real Lives Tell Us
Removing DEI doesn’t merely affect workplace morale—it has measurable effects on access, outcomes, and opportunity. Consider:
In education, underrepresented minority (URM) students in STEM fields often have higher attrition rates, lower GPAs, and less institutional support than their white counterparts. These gaps are not due to lack of ability, but lack of support, mentoring, access, and equitable treatment.
In healthcare, racial and ethnic disparities in outcomes—maternal mortality, chronic disease prevalence, access to preventive care—persist. DEI programs often provide the explicit attention, funding, accountability, and training needed to reduce these gaps. Without them, systems tend to revert to prior inequitable norms.
When DEI offices, resources, or trainings are removed or suppressed, marginalized employees frequently report being excluded, underrepresented, overburdened with invisible labor, and powerless to challenge bias.
What DEI Is Not, So We Don’t Lose the Thread
To be clear:
DEI is not about giving unearned advantage. It is about removing unfair barriers.
DEI is not zero‑sum. Growth in inclusion tends to benefit everyone—companies, communities, and institutions—by improving diversity of thought, reducing turnover, enhancing innovation, and better serving diverse populations.
DEI is not just “nice to have.” It is a safeguard—against biases, stereotypes, structural neglect—and is backed by legal precedent and empirical evidence.
DEI is not just “nice to have.” It is a safeguard—against biases, stereotypes, structural neglect—and is backed by legal precedent and empirical evidence.
Legal Risks of Compliance
Ironically, complying with the dismantling of DEI can itself be risky:
Employers may violate Title VII and other anti-discrimination laws if they remove bias training or anti-harassment programs that help ensure compliance with those laws.
With EEOC’s recent technical assistance warnings, companies that discard “common features” of DEI (like training or affinity groups) may open themselves up to legal claims, especially if disparities emerge.
Without transparency and accountability, institutions may violate civil rights obligations, especially if funding or federal grants are involved.
As I discussed in “Executive Orders Are Not Laws: Why Trump’s Declarations Shouldn’t Deter DEIA Work”, executive orders cannot legally do away with civil rights protections already enshrined in law. They can complicate things. They can stymie work. But they cannot override statutes like Title VII or the Civil Rights Act. And in “The Hypocrisy of Anti‑DEI Laws”, I explored how many so‑called “neutral” bans on DEI are actually selective in what they ban, who they punish, and which institutions they protect. This is why institutions must resist the pressure to comply blindly—because many of these attacks are not grounded in legal precedent, but in political theater. And when we surrender equity work out of confusion or fear, we abandon protections that are still legally valid, morally urgent, and historically necessary.
What’s at Stake: If DEI Falls, We All Lose
Without DEI (or with weakened DEI), the following likely reemerge or worsen:
Widened racial and socioeconomic health disparities: Black maternal mortality, infant mortality, life expectancy, chronic illness outcomes—all risk worsening if bias isn’t addressed.
Reduced representation in leadership, education, and professional fields: The legacy of exclusion will reinhabit institutions, meaning fewer voices at decision‑making tables.
Alienation, turnover, mental health costs for marginalized professionals forced to “prove” themselves in systems built around someone else’s norms.
Risk to social trust, public legitimacy: Institutions that fail to honor equity are seen as unfair. That not only harms morale—it undermines public investments, faith in healthcare, education, and government itself.
What Must Be Done: Strategies for Holding the Line
Here are concrete steps drawing on your previous arguments and the new evidence:
Legal Guardrails Remain Key
Uphold & defend Title VII, the Civil Rights Act, state and local laws that protect against discrimination.
Challenge executive orders that attempt to erode statutory protections.
Embed Equity Within the Core
Make DEI work part of institutional mission, performance metrics, and accountability (not just as a department or program).
Allocate stable funding, leadership support, and pathways for marginalized employees to lead and shape policy.
Use Evidence & Data Aggressively
Collect, publish, and act on data about disparities—pay gaps, outcomes, attrition—so that decision‑makers can’t ignore them.
Employ results metrics, not just participation metrics, to show whether DEI is working.
Public Education & Narrative Defense
Challenge false narratives that DEI is discrimination against majority groups. Use historical and empirical evidence to show the opposite.
Protect scholarships, mentorships, research, and educational programs that teach the history and effects of discrimination (including slavery, Jim Crow, segregation).
Allies Must Step Forward
White leaders, particularly, must refuse to stay silent. They should name the rollback, call out erasure when they see it, and take responsibility for pushing back without centering blame.
Institutions and companies must resist pressures to comply uncritically and instead act in alignment with principles of equity and justice.
DEI was never a luxury. It was—and remains—a necessary tool for justice.
DEI was never a luxury. It was—and remains—a necessary tool for justice. It is how institutions, laws, professionals, and communities acknowledge what history, data, and lived experience already tell us: that systemic, structural inequity is real—and unless we build, protect, and defend programs designed to counter it, we risk a return to worse outcomes for millions.
The fight over DEI is not abstract—it’s a battle over who gets to count, who gets access, whose lives are considered worth saving. And we must choose to stay in the fight
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