President Donald Trump this week rescinded a nearly 60-year-old executive order that prohibited government contractors from discriminating in their hiring, firing, promotion or pay practices.
Replacing it is a new requirement that those employers certify that they do not have what he termed “illegal” diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. He also ordered each federal agency to identify up to nine targets for federal investigations into their DEI practices to see if they should be judged “illegal.” That includes publicly-traded private corporations, large non-profit corporations or associations and major foundations.
The order that Trump rescinded, originally signed by President Lyndon Johnson, applied to virtually every major business and many small companies that together employ about a quarter of workers in the United States. It had remained in force through both Democratic and Republican administrations, including Trump’s own first term.
