Trump's workplace harassment fighters are taking on a big new target

Last month, Andrea Lucas, the chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, posted a video to X asking an unusual question: "Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex?" she says to the camera. "The EEOC is committed to identifying, attacking, and eliminating all forms of race and sex discrimination — including against white male applicants and employees."

The video has been viewed nearly 6 million times, with top comments heaping praise. "This message gave me hope because I did not think this was ever possible to happen to me in America," one user wrote. The video wasn't announcing a new policy; white men have been protected from discrimination just as people of any race or gender under the law. But it capped a year of sweeping efforts to align the bipartisan, independent EEOC with President Donald Trump's culture war on "woke."

The yearlong campaign began when the president quickly ousted two of the three Democrats on the EEOC last January, leaving it without a quorum for months. The commission also paused processing charges related to gender identity and sexuality for nearly five months; it resumed them with a focus on hiring, firing, and promotions and under heightened scrutiny. Following an executive order from Trump, the EEOC ceased investigating what are known as disparate impact cases, which take on policies that appear neutral on the surface yet can still be discriminatory if they unfairly limit certain groups (a height requirement for a job, say). And in late December, the EEOC filed a request to rescind guidance on harassment that it had published in 2024, which it will vote on this Thursday. EEO Leaders, a group that includes former EEOC officials, said the request is part of the Trump administration's efforts to attack anti-discrimination laws and create confusion around federal laws that bar gender- and sexuality-based harassment. "It is yet another salvo in this administration's prolonged attack on LGBTQI+ people," the group said in a public statement.

Now, Trump's campaign promise to fight an "anti-white feeling" in America has materialized at the EEOC. Lucas, who was installed formally as chair in November, told Reuters last month it is her goal to "shift to a conservative view of civil rights," which includes inquiries into DEI programs that the administration argues can discriminate against white men and religious liberty issues. Deborah Vagins, national campaign director of Equal Rights Advocates, a nonprofit focused on gender equity in workplaces and schools, says it's an effort underway to "remake the EEOC in Trump's image."

Legal experts I spoke to for this story noted that white men can be subjected to race- or gender-based discrimination, while racial minorities and women are more likely to report discrimination at work. A University of Massachusetts, Amherst analysis of EEOC charges between 2012 and 2016 found that about five in 100,000 male workers filed charges for sex discrimination, and 1 in 100,000 white workers filed charges for racial discrimination. For Black people, that figure jumps to 195 for every 100,000 workers. An analysis of EEOC data from the National Women's Law Center found that during fiscal year 2016, nearly 7,000 sexual harassment charges were filed, 82% from women. "There is no evidence that there is such overwhelming discrimination against white men that the very, very limited resources of the EEOC should be directed in that direction," Vagins says.

Ccreated in 1965, the EEOC investigates claims of workplace discrimination and is the primary enforcer of workplace protections codified by the Civil Rights Act. In 2024, the commission won some $700 million for workers through settlements and litigation, often for minority workers who have faced disproportionate discrimination.

After the racial and gender reckonings of the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, many companies went all-in on public statements cheering diversity and launched DEI programs. Claims that men had become the victims left out of inclusion programs followed. Half of men ages 18 to 29 believe there is "some" or "a lot" of discrimination against men in the US, according to the Survey Center on American Life, up from about a third in 2019. Trump told The New York Times this month that he believes "white people were very badly treated" following the passage of the Civil Rights Act 60 years ago. He added: "It accomplished some very wonderful things, but it also hurt a lot of people — people that deserve to go to a college or deserve to get a job were unable to get a job. So it was, it was a reverse discrimination."

White men hold an overwhelming majority of CEO roles at Fortune 500 companies. Last year, the gender pay gap widened for a second year in a row. Workplace discrimination and harassment is underreported, but experts tell me that it's difficult to say white men in particular are missing at high rates from the data. A survey of federal workers found that about a third of white men said they have experienced harassment, like bullying or physical intimidation, at work; those who had were more likely than other white men to see systemic race and gender bias at work, and to take action in reporting incidents of bias against their colleagues, according to a University of Michigan study in 2023. There's been little time to see the long-term effects of post-2020 DEI efforts. A Wall Street Journal analysis of 13 million jobs found that the largest public companies' workforces became slightly less white, with Asian and Hispanic workers gaining ground, while half of all senior management roles still belonged to white men. A 2025 Stanford University study that examined how companies hired after facing a DEI-related controversy found that large firms made small changes, increasing the hiring of women and people of color at about 0.8% — mostly into junior positions.

The Supreme Court ruled last year that plaintiffs of a majority class, like white or straight people, do not have to meet a higher standard of proof than minorities to win discrimination cases, and the EEOC callout to white men could bring in more cases that were previously unreported. Legal experts I spoke to characterized the video as "clumsy," "inappropriate," and unprecedented, since the EEOC hasn't historically solicited complaints from specific protected classes over others. (The EEOC did not respond to questions I sent for this story). The shift in messaging doesn't mean that other groups are less entitled to fighting workplace discrimination. "It is a lot of shock and awe, smoke and mirrors, distraction," says Nance Schick, an employment attorney and workplace mediator. "But the law hasn't changed."

As the EEOC looks to take on issues affecting white men, corporate mentor programs that focus on women or people of color could become targets, if they exclude white men from similar mentorship opportunities, legal experts say. In the video, Lucas directs viewers to an EEOC webpage focused on discrimination related to DEI, which it says is "a broad term that is not defined in the statute." She adds that such programs could be illegal if they take any employment action motivated by a worker's gender, sex, or other protected characteristics. The specter of legal action could lead more companies to abandon DEI efforts. With the mounting attacks on DEI, companies must carefully review and audit their DEI programs, which is costly in time and resources, Nonnie Shivers, co-chair of the DEI compliance practice group for law firm Ogletree Deakins.

In March, the EEOC sent letters to 20 law firms seeking details about their DEI policies. Companies like Target and Amazon immediately scrapped all or parts of their DEI programs as Trump took office. The sudden shifts with the EEOC aren't changes to discrimination law, experts told me. "Employers should not reflexively comply with unreasonable demands that are not supported by the law," says Jenny Yang, a former EEOC commissioner. Companies should "do their own analysis of the law and the risks," she says. "If they reflexively pull back on important equal opportunity efforts, their workforce will suffer and they could start seeing discrimination complaints from many different groups."

The dropping of disparate impact cases could also shift the type of investigations conducted by the EEOC. These complaints can take the form of barring people with criminal history from jobs unrelated to their convictions, or seemingly standardized tests that may not be so standard across races. They focus on ways that systemic requirements can disproportionately help or hurt groups. They're also vital for evaluating how AI is used in hiring, Yang says, which have been shown to repeat human biases in selecting some resumes over others, like knocking applicants who may have interrupted work histories (resume gaps tend to be more common among women who leave the workforce to care for children). "The tension here is that it is often difficult to prove intentional discrimination," Yang says. "Discrimination can manifest in much more subtle and complex ways, which disparate impact is important to demonstrate."

For workers subjected to discrimination — all of them, not just white men — there are still protections. "It remains incredibly critical for employers to update their training modules to be maximally inclusive with examples, quizzes, questions, and other materials to understand the broad nature of the law protecting everyone." says Shivers. Whether the EEOC's campaign will uncover wide-ranging discrimination against white men remains to be seen. But Lucas's video leaves no doubt about the direction the EEOC is heading in this year.

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.