Federal Overhaul is a multipart series that explores the impact of the Trump administration’s restructuring of the federal government on Black communities.
“Overbearing.”
“Intimidating.”
“Aggressive.”
Oscar Hampton, a Black former attorney at the U.S. Department of Labor, claimed in a federal district court complaint filed in 2023 that this was the language that white attorneys at the agency directed at their Black colleagues. He also claimed that he was demoted, denied bonuses, and eventually dismissed for drawing attention to this environment.
“Hillary Clinton said one time when she was running for office that when traditional candidates do things, people focus on results, but when nontraditional candidates do things, people focus on tone and behavior, and minimize results. That’s really what I experienced,” Hampton told Capital B, explaining that there was a lot of questioning of Black attorneys’ presence at the department because they didn’t always have their white colleagues’ pedigree.
The Department of Labor, he added, should be “the model employer of our nation” when it comes to quashing discrimination, “but it’s just not.” He’s still pursuing his lawsuit against the agency in a federal district court. He noted that he’s struggled to secure a job because the information about him online has negatively affected his search.
Dismantling Protections
If President Donald Trump or Elon Musk’s team of players known as the “Department of Government Efficiency” gets the final word, we might not see as much attention on the kinds of issues Hampton brought to light. And that wouldn’t be because the administration has ended discrimination.
The administration is moving to slash legally mandated equal employment opportunity and civil rights offices that empower federal workers to file complaints and enforce antidiscrimination laws.
The Department of Labor is preparing to reduce its Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, tasked with making sure that government contractors combat discrimination in their work, from 479 employees to 50.
And the Social Security Administration in February shut down its Office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity, which was made up of some 150 people and charged with overseeing civil rights and harassment complaints and managing disability services.
Federal workers who feel that they’ve been discriminated against can seek legal guidance from an array of nonprofit organizations and advocacy networks, but without access to these federal civil rights offices, assistance might be limited and slow going.
“This is clearly an attempt to roll back protections and leave little recourse for people being discriminated against at these federal agencies,” Adrianne Shropshire, the executive director of BlackPAC, an organization that raises Black communities’ awareness of issues such as the attack on the federal workforce, told Capital B. “We also have to think about the impact on the private sector — the tendency of corporations to follow this administration’s lead is scary.”
Fatima Goss Graves, the president and chief executive officer of the National Women’s Law Center, echoed some of these sentiments, and she underscored the widespread implications of this overhaul.
“People devote so much of their lives to public service because they want to help others,” she said. “Eliminating these offices just makes it harder both for workers who are there to complain about discrimination, and for those who do business with these agencies to do the same.”
How the administration is attacking civil rights
The Department of Labor and the Social Security Administration aren’t the only federal agencies that are halting or shrinking their civil rights functions and, as a result, imperiling the freedoms of their workers.
The Federal Trade Commission has downsized its equal employment opportunity office from six employees to three; NASA’s EEO office also has faced cuts, and most of its information on how to pursue discrimination complaints has been scrubbed from the agency’s website, according to February reporting from The Washington Post.
These moves — made to bring agencies in line with Trump’s executive orders seeking to purge the federal government of diversity initiatives and anything that could be linked to them — reveal how regressive the administration’s political vision is, Goss Graves argued.
“Their agenda isn’t to go after DEI. It’s to undermine basic antidiscrimination protections, to undermine the basic experiences that workers have on the job, to undermine the basic idea that people should be treated fairly,” she said, reiterating what sociologists and historians previously told Capital B.
In recent weeks, federal employees have articulated that they no longer feel safe at work. Some believe that they’ll be fired just for being Black. Others say that it’s as if the country has returned to the 1950s, and they must retreat back into the closet. Still others worry that they’ll be targeted because of their disabilities.
These tensions are arising amid the administration’s broader assault on the federal workforce.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs plans to lay off 80,000 employees beginning this summer, and the U.S. Department of Education announced earlier this month that it’s cutting about 1,300 positions, including many of its Office for Civil Rights teams. The U.S. Department of Justice in February demoted several top prosecutors, even though it has insisted that it’s interested in tackling hate crimes and other issues these attorneys covered.
The week that he returned to the White House, Trump rescinded President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Executive Order 11246, signed in 1965. It not only prohibited employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, and national origin for organizations receiving federal contracting — it also required that federal contractors work proactively toward creating equal opportunity for marginalized groups at their firms.
“One of our oldest ideas — going back to President Johnson — is that since contractors have the privilege of making money off the federal government, the very least they can do is not discriminate,” Goss Graves explained.
The private sector is following suit, with some companies parroting the federal government’s actions and eroding civil rights gains.
“Five years ago, [major corporations] were posting about Black Lives Matter,” Theodore Johnson, a senior adviser at the public policy think tank New America and a retired U.S. Navy commander, previously told Capital B. But now, he continued, these companies are “following government cues,” getting rid of race-conscious policies as they scramble to comply with the administration’s directions.
How federal workers can still get help
As the Trump administration continues on its quest to demolish the federal government, Shropshire, with BlackPAC, said that employees should get legal help during this period of social and political upheaval.
“There are civil rights organizations, such as the NAACP. But it isn’t just the national office. There are many tiny local branches, including in places where we know there are a lot of federal employees,” she said. “Right now, I’m in California, which has one of the largest federal workforce populations outside the Washington, D.C., region.”
Roughly 450,000 federal workers — one-fifth of the federal workforce — reside in the Washington region, which includes parts of Maryland and Northern Virginia, while 147,500 and 130,000 federal employees are in California and Texas, respectively, per the Pew Research Center.
Nonprofit organizations and advocacy networks — from the NAACP to the National Employment Lawyers Association to the National Women’s Law Center — can champion federal workers at moments like this, when the country is undergoing ferocious change.
Jean L. Tom, a partner at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, remarked on this turmoil at a recent event hosted by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law: “What’s kind of striking to me is how every sector is touched right now — and in a negative way, I would say — by what’s been unleashed by this administration,” she said. “It’s just been a time of chaos and uncertainty.”
The past several weeks have taken a catastrophic toll on Black federal workers in parts of the country.
“I thought that I wanted to work in the federal government until retirement. I was totally content to work at the same agency for like 40 years,” a Black federal employee previously told Capital B, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “Now, I don’t know. I’m keeping my options open.”
Still, Goss Graves wants these workers to understand that, even though the administration is making it far more challenging to stay on the job and not experience discrimination, they do have options.
While the administration has sought to end the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — in an unprecedented move, Trump in January dismissed two Democratic commissioners of the agency that upholds workplace civil rights laws — the EEOC remains an avenue.
Indeed, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which among other things embraces the notion that people ought to be able to work safely and with dignity, still protects people, Goss Graves pointed out. The same goes for other statutes that guarantee protections based on age and disability.
“Any agency or employer that’s deciding that it no longer has to address unfair pay or harassment or discrimination in hiring and firing would be making a giant mistake,” she said. “The federal government and Trump aren’t the only ways to enforce our country’s long-standing civil rights laws. There’s a whole private bar prepared to ensure that people can access their rights.”
EEO offices are far from perfect. But culling them “is going to have an extraordinarily negative impact,” according to Hampton, the former Department of Labor attorney.
When you don’t have an internal apparatus that can rein in discrimination and stick up for federal employees, he said, “you’re going to create an environment where you’re not getting the best people to do the job.”
Capital B staff writer Christina Carrega contributed to this report.
