The head of the U.S. agency for enforcing workplace civil rights posted a social media call-out urging white men to come forward if they have experienced race or sex discrimination at work.

“Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex? You may have a claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws," U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chair Andrea Lucas, a vocal critic of DEI, wrote on X Wednesday evening. The post urged eligible workers to reach out to the agency “as soon as possible" and referred users to the agency's fact sheet on “DEI-related discrimination” for more information.

That document has been criticized by former agency commissioners as misleading for portraying DEI initiatives as legally fraught when “employers lawfully may – and indeed should – take proactive steps to identify barriers that have limited the opportunities of applicants and employees based on any protected characteristic.”

Lucas' post, viewed millions of times, was shared about two hours after Vice President JD Vance posted an article he said “describes the evil of DEI and its consequences," which also received millions of views. Lucas responded to Vance's post saying: “Absolutely right @JDVance. And precisely because this widespread, systemic, unlawful discrimination primarily harmed white men, elites didn’t just turn a blind eye; they celebrated it. Absolutely unacceptable; unlawful; immoral.”

She added that the EEOC “won’t rest until this discrimination is eliminated.” Neither the agency nor Vance responded immediately to requests for additional comment.

David Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at the NYU School of Law, said the social media posts demonstrate a “fundamental misunderstanding of what DEI is.”

Opponents of DEI "tend to frame it as a set of illegal preferences,” Glasgow said. “It’s really much more about creating a culture in which you get the most out of everyone who you’re bringing on board, where everyone experiences fairness and equal opportunity, including white men and members of other groups.”

The Meltzer Center tracks lawsuits that are likely to affect workplace DEI practices, including 57 cases of workplace discrimination. Although there are instances in which it occurs on a case-by-case basis, Glasgow said he has not seen “any kind of systematic evidence that white men are being discriminated against.”

He pointed out that Fortune 500 CEOs are overwhelmingly white men, and that, relative to their share of the population, the demographic is overrepresented in corporate senior leadership, Congress, and beyond.

“If DEI has been this engine of discrimination against white men, I have to say it hasn’t really been doing a very good job at achieving that,” Glasgow said.

Lucas announced in January when she was named acting chair that “rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination” would be a priority. And although she lacked the agency majority needed to go full throttle until the EEOC regained a quorum in October, she has still aggressively pursued that goal.

Lucas sent letters to 20 prominent law firms demanding information about diversity fellowships and other programs she claimed could be evidence of discriminatory practices; several cut deals with the administration to avoid being targeted by the White House. And the agency last month filed a subpoena enforcement action in federal court to compel financial services company Northwestern Mutual to provide information on its DEI practices related to an employee’s discrimination charge.

“When we see clear indications that an employer’s DEI program may violate federal prohibitions against discrimination, we will use the full extent of our authority — including subpoena enforcement — to obtain the information needed to investigate and take appropriate action,” Lucas said in a Nov. 20 press release.

It is “unusual” and “problematic” for the head of the agency to single out a particular demographic group for civil rights enforcement, according to former EEOC Chair Jenny Yang, now a partner at law firm Outten & Golden. “It suggests some sort of priority treatment,” Yang said. “That’s not something that sounds to me like equal opportunity for all.”

On the other hand, the agency has done the opposite for transgender workers, whose discrimination complaints have been deprioritized or dropped completely, Yang explained. The EEOC has limited resources, and must accordingly prioritize which cases to pursue. But treating charges differently based on workers' identities goes against the mission of the agency, Yang said. “It worries me that a message is being sent that the EEOC only cares about some workers and not others."

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