LatinoJustice, a national nonprofit that has played a big role in advancing equity and justice for Latinx communities in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, is urging the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to investigate four right-wing organizations for potential civil rights violations in their hiring practices.
The organization uses and challenges laws to fight harmful systems, empower communities and promote racial justice. In its complaint, LatinoJustice alleges discriminatory hiring practices under the Civil Rights Act’s Title VII for right-wing legal organizations that have “relentlessly advocated for a ‘color-blind America’ and argued reverse discrimination against white people.” It notes that the organizations it lists hire predominantly white men.
“There are a number of these organizations that are really trying to weaponize civil rights laws, anti-discrimination laws, against the very communities that they were designed to protect and uplift,” said Lourdes Rosado, president and general counsel of LatinoJustice.
The four organizations are Consovoy McCarthy, The Wisconsin Institute, America Legal First and Pacific Legal Foundation.
Consovoy McCarthy has an all-white partnership with only two women in leadership and has frequently attacked race-based scholarships, Reuters reported.
America First Legal was founded by former Trump administration officials who claim to fight against discrimination against white men and is led entirely by white men.
Pacific Legal Foundation is led exclusively by white men and has argued the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies hurt white applicants.
In Wisconsin, the Milwaukee-based Wisconsin Institute’s entire board of directors is made up of white men. The organization frequently sues universities and schools over DEI policies. LatinoJustice points out that its makeup is odd due to the legal workforce in Wisconsin being approximately 50% women.
The four organizations have made frequent complaints to the EEOC, Rosado said.
“They’re really trying to turn Title VII, which is a federal law from the 1960s that was created specifically to prohibit discrimination on a number of bases in employment, on its head,” Rosado said. “But when you look at these organizations, you look at who is running them, who’s the leadership, who’s on their boards, you can’t help but be struck by the fact that they are almost exclusively white men.”
LatinoJustice wrote a letter to the EEOC’s chair, Andrea Lucas, to investigate and determine if the organizations were violating Title VII by “systematically excluding women and people of color from leadership positions.”
In its letter, LatinoJustice turns Lucas’ own words from her bio against her to take action.
Her bio states her intention to root “out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination; protecting American workers from anto-American national origin discrimination; defending the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights, inclusing women’s rights to single-sex spaces at work; protecting workers from religious bias and harrassment, including antisemitism; and remedying other areas of recent under enforcement.”
To do that, LatinoJustice said it’s time to address racial and gender discrimination by investigating organizations that appear to systematically block certain races, ethnicities and genders from leadership.
“The EEOC is receiving so many complaints from these groups … if she [Lucas] takes a look, she’ll see that there’s evidence that they, in fact, are also engaged in discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity and gender,” Rosado said. “They should be investigated as well. It’s about calling her on a double standard.”
While LatinoJustice hopes that its complaint to the EEOC does result in an investigation, it does not fully expect one to happen. More importantly, shedding light on the double standard and raising the issue will help give people the strength to “do the right thing,” Rosado said.
