The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has sent letters to 20 international law firms requesting information on their DEI practices, as the Trump administration continues its campaign against “unlawful” diversity policies.

In the letters, EEOC Acting Chair Andrea Lucas expressed “concern” that some of the firms’ hiring and promotion practices may be in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, amounting to unlawful disparate treatment on the basis of race, sex, or other protected characteristics. 

“The EEOC is prepared to root out discrimination anywhere it may rear its head, including in our nation’s elite law firms,” said Lucas. “No one is above the law – and certainly not the private bar.”

According to the EEOC, Title VII’s barring of employers from limiting, segregating, or classifying employees based on protected characteristics extends to voluntary employee groups and any activities which are sponsored by the employer.

There is no exception to these prohibitions in the name of diversity, the agency said in a statement.

The letters ask questions of the firms on a variety of employment policies, including hiring and compensation practices, internships, and partnership decisions, as well as the role that DEI policies may have had in decisions regarding layoffs during reductions in force.

For example, in a letter directed to Cooley regarding its 2022 layoffs that resulted in the loss of 150 employees, the EEOC asks the firm to provide “all documents upon which Cooley relied to make its determination on whom to RIF, including any internal memorandums, data, metrics, directives, and responsive reports from managers”.

Using publicly available information, the EEOC also questioned how Reed Smith could justify increasing the number of Black lawyers on its Global Leadership Team by 81% during 2021. 

The full list of firms that have received letters includes A&O Shearman, Debevoise & Plimpton, Cooley, Freshfields, Goodwin Procter, Hogan Lovells, Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, McDermott Will & Emery, Milbank, Morgan Lewis, Morrison & Foerster, Perkins Coie, Reed Smith, Ropes & Gray, Sidley Austin, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, Skadden, White & Case, and WilmerHale.

The EEOC has also created a dedicated email address where whistleblowers can submit information about potentially unlawful DEI practices at law firms: lawfirmDEI@eeoc.gov.

America’s legal sector has become a popular target for the new administration’s war on DEI.

Over the weekend, President Donald Trump released an executive order suspending the security clearance of lawyers at Paul Weiss, accusing the firm of discriminating “against its own employees on the basis of race and other categories prohibited by civil rights laws”.

In the order, President Trump indicates that his administration’s war on “big law” is likely to continue, complaining about its “outsized role in undermining the judicial process and in the destruction of bedrock American principles”.

“Paul Weiss, along with nearly every other large, influential, or industry leading law firm, makes decisions around ‘targets’ based on race and sex,” the statement reads.

“My administration is committed to ending such unlawful discrimination perpetrated in the name of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ policies and ensuring that federal benefits support the laws and policies of the United States, including those laws and policies promoting our national security and respecting the democratic process.”

Perkins Coie has faced similar issues with the White House, after an executive order released earlier this month suspended its lawyers’ security clearance and directed federal agencies to take “appropriate steps to terminate any contact” with the firm, due to its work for Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential campaign.

Trump also accused the firm of discriminating against its staff and job applicants though “publicly announced percentage quotas in 2019 for hiring and promotion on the basis of race and other categories prohibited by civil rights laws”.

This order was restrained by a federal judge last week, who found that Perkins Coie would have faced immediate and irreparable harm if the order’s provision targeting the law firm’s work with government contractors was implemented.

“When you say that if the president, in his view, takes the position that an individual or an organisation or a company is operating a way that is not in the nation’s interests, he can issue an executive order like this and take steps to bar that individual, that entity, that company from doing any business with the government, terminate whatever contracts they've got, bar them from federal buildings,” said Judge Beryl Howell. 

“I mean, that’s a pretty extraordinary power for the president to exercise.”

Howell is the same judge who shot down the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) attempt to fire Democratic board member Gwynne Wilcox earlier this month.

Paul Weiss has launched a similar legal challenge, using last week’s decision as evidence that the executive order is unconstitutional.