President Trump's Agenda Starts By Eliminating Internal Federal DEI Programs

Seyfarth Synopsis: On Day 1 of President Trump’s new administration, he issued a series of Executive Orders.  The “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing” Order revokes the Biden Administration’s prior DEI efforts in the federal government, instructs federal agencies to terminate all DEI offices and initiatives and to end all DEI performance requirements for employees, contractors, or federal grant recipients.  This Executive Order is focused on federal agency action and activities.

On January 20, 2025, President Trump signed an Executive Order targeting federal DEI programs, named “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.” He also signed another Executive Order, titled “Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions,” which revokes, among many other things, President Biden’s foundational DEI Executive Orders, including EO 13985 on racial equity and EO 14035 on diversity in the federal workforce.

President Trump's Day 1 Executive Orders kick off a coordinated framework to eliminate programs categorized as discriminatory. It sweeps under this umbrella any “illegal DEI” programs, as well as “'diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear.”

The Executive Order sets a 60-day timeline for agency heads to terminate federal agencies’ internal DEI, DEIA, and “environmental justice” offices and positions, to end federal agencies’ equity action plans and equity-related grants or contracts, and to eliminate DEI performance requirements for all federal employees, contractors, and grant recipients.  It also requires agencies to provide the Director of OMB with a list of federal contractors who provided DEI training or DEI training materials to agency or department employees.   

The Executive Order also establishes ongoing oversight through mandatory monthly meetings in which deputy agency heads must report to President Trump’s Domestic Policy Director Vince Haley, along with Russell Vought, Trump’s Director of OMB and the Director of OPM.[1] The establishment of this regular cadence of White House oversight, combined with the tight deadlines, signals that the administration intends to maintain sustained pressure on agencies to identify and eliminate DEI programs “under whatever name they appear.”[2]

Notably, there is significant ambiguity regarding the scope of the Executive Order and we expect that OMB will soon be clarifying for the agencies how it is interpreting the reach of the Executive Order. We expect OMB and OPM to provide additional guidance in the coming weeks about how agencies should interpret key terms like “DEI performance requirements” and what constitutes an “equity-related” grant or contract.

Another fundamental challenge in determining what, exactly, might constitute a “DEI program” to be eliminated is that while some federal programs have been explicitly labeled as such, under President Biden, federal agencies were required to develop “equity action plans” and implement new programs that removed systemic barriers for underserved communities. Many programs and contracts that flowed from these efforts may not explicitly reference DEI or equity in their current form. For instance, an agency program focused on expanding access to federal services might have originated from an agency’s equity action plan, but may operate as part of the agency’s general economic development efforts. And since President Trump’s election, some programs, offices, and positions may have been renamed or recharacterized. President Trump’s Executive Order appears to anticipate this challenge by directing agencies to assess which programs “have been misleadingly relabeled in an attempt to preserve their pre-November 4, 2024 function.” Accordingly, identifying these programs will require substantial cooperation from career staff, who may have different views on which programs fall within the Order’s scope.

It is unlikely that President Trump’s Executive Order extends to federal contractor obligations under Executive Order 11246 (signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965), or that compliance with the requirements of EO 11246 might be considered a “DEI performance requirement.”  From our perspective, if President Trump intended to alter the requirements of EO 11246, there are more direct ways to do so. In the upcoming days and weeks, we anticipate greater clarity from the White House regarding the Trump administration’s approach in this area.    

Another development that occurred on Day 1 of the new Trump administration was that President Trump named the lone Republican Commissioner, Andrea Lucas, as Acting Chair of the EEOC. Lucas has been an EEOC Commissioner since 2020, and she has frequently spoken about DEI issues. On January 21, 2025, in the EEOC’s press release announcing her appointment, Acting Chair Lucas asserted that the EEOC has “remained silent in the face of multiple forms of widespread, overt discrimination” and that one of her priorities “will include rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination.”

Just hours later, the three Democratic members of the Commission, Charlotte Burrows, Jocelyn Samuels, and Kalpana Kotagal, issued a joint statement defending DEI practices, stating:

Common sense practices, such as monitoring hiring and promotions decisions, skills-based hiring, standardized interview practices, and robust recruitment, remain lawful and important ways to promote the goals of our nation’s laws and founding principles. These and other diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility practices seek to include all workers according to their talents and abilities. ... Barring adoption of these practices can only result in legal risk to employers and lost opportunities for vulnerable communities.

The stark contrast between the statements from Acting Chair Lucas and the EEOC’s Democratic Commissioners demonstrates how the EEOC is likely to become a key battleground over DEI practices in the coming months, with employers facing ongoing uncertainty about which specific DEI practices might draw heightened scrutiny or attack.

While President Trump’s first Executive Order on DEI is focused on federal government programs, its broader impact may be felt throughout the private sector. Given the centrality of “anti-DEI” sentiment identified in the Executive Order and the broad scope of programs potentially affected, over the next days and weeks, we fully expect President Trump to sign additional Executive Orders further addressing DEI programs.

Seyfarth will continue to monitor these developments and provide updates as developments occur. For more information on how these changes may affect your workplace policies and compliance obligations, please contact any of the authors, a member of Seyfarth’s People Analytics team, or any Seyfarth attorney with whom you regularly work.

 

[1] The Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy is one of the most senior White House policy positions, working directly with the President to coordinate domestic policy across the federal government. The monthly meeting requirement with this official, along with the heads of OMB and OPM, demonstrates the high-level attention being given to implementing this Executive Order.

[2] These monthly meetings are also to include a review of the agencies’ data on what the Executive Order terms “the prevalence and the economic and social costs of DEI” across a broad range of agency activities.