Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

18. Department of Labor and Related Agencies · Notable

Direct DOJ and EEOC to enforce Title VII against racial classifications and quotas

Done

582 18. Department of Labor and Related Agencies

“Direct DOJ and EEOC to enforce Title VII. The President should direct the Department of Justice and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to enforce Title VII to prohibit racial classifications and quotas, including human-resources classifications and DEI trainings that promote critical race theory.”

What has happened

  1. Done

    The EEOC completed the regulatory side by rescinding 29 CFR part 1608, its 1979 Guidelines on Affirmative Action Appropriate Under Title VII, and removing them from the CFR. Enforcement in the same direction is on the record: a settlement in which four large law firms disavowed DEI (2025-04-11) and a Commission suit against The New York Times over a promotion denied to a white male employee (2026-05-05).

  2. Done

    The EEOC and the Department of Justice jointly released two Title VII technical-assistance documents — "What To Do If You Experience Discrimination Related to DEI at Work" (joint) and "What You Should Know About DEI-Related Discrimination at Work" (EEOC) — stating that DEI policies are unlawful where an employment action is motivated in whole or in part by race or sex. Both named agencies had by this date taken the enforcement position the Quote asks the President to direct. Executive Order 14281 (2025-04-23) then directed the same two officials by name to reassess pending Title VII matters resting on disparate impact and to issue joint guidance.

  3. Attempted

    Executive Order 14173 section 4 told every agency head, with the Attorney General's assistance, to advance the order's merit policy in the private sector, and ordered the Attorney General to deliver within 120 days a strategic enforcement plan naming key sectors, "the most egregious and discriminatory DEI practitioners" in each, and up to nine potential civil compliance investigations per agency. A direction to enforce, with no enforcement action yet.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • The instrument is not one document but a chain: Executive Order 14173 (the direction), the joint EEOC/DOJ technical assistance of 2025-03-19 (both named agencies taking the position), Executive Order 14281 sections 6(a) and 7(b) (the same two officials named again), and the EEOC’s rescission of its affirmative-action guidelines (2026-07-06).
  • The “DEI trainings that promote critical race theory” limb of the Quote is carried inside the same instruments: the EEOC’s technical assistance treats DEI training as potentially unlawful harassment where it is discriminatory in content. The federal-workforce side of that limb is #1592’s ask, not this one.
  • Boundary: done rather than partial. The object is the enforcement posture of two named agencies, and both have adopted it with dated instruments and litigation behind them; there is no separable piece of this ask left undelivered. A reviewer who reads the object as an ongoing enforcement program rather than a posture could hold it at partial. Flagged for the consistency pass.
  • https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/eeoc-settlement-four-biglaw-firms-disavow-dei-and-affirm-their-commitment-merit-based — EEOC settlement with Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, Simpson Thacher and A&O Shearman, 2025-04-11; read in full, kept in the note rather than the frontmatter because the two events above already carry Primary Evidence.
Action
restrict
Object
Title VII enforcement by DOJ and EEOC
ID
1593