One of the few agencies to make a public announcement is the VA, which said that of its workforce of some 440,000, it has placed 60 on administrative leave under the DEIA order. Image: DCStockPhotography/Shutterstock.com
New guidance on President Trump’s executive order ending DEIA-oriented initiatives and related positions in federal agencies tells agencies to draw a line between those functions and those required by laws such as the Civil Rights Act and the Rehabilitation Act.
The order applies to activities such as “recruiting, interviewing, hiring, training or other professional development, internships, fellowships, promotion, retention, discipline, and separation” based on certain characteristics, OPM said in a memo on chcoc.gov.
“This does not apply to, and agencies should retain, personnel, offices and procedures required by statute or regulation to counsel employees allegedly subjected to discrimination, receive discrimination complaints, collect demographic data, and process accommodation requests. Such functions can and should be transferred among personnel and offices at the agency if those functions were previously handled by a DEIA office that is subject to a reduction-in-force action,” it says.
Agencies further should “rescind policies and practices that are contrary to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. But agencies should not terminate or prohibit accessibility or disability-related accommodations, assistance, or other programs that are required by those or related laws,” it says.
In both cases, agencies are to reduce the staff to the minimum needed to carry out those functions, it says.
Further, agencies should prohibit employee resource groups “that promote unlawful DEIA initiatives or advance recruitment, hiring, preferential benefits (including but not limited to training or other career development opportunities), or employee retention agendas based on protected characteristics.”
They may, however, continue to allow employees to hold affinity group functions so long as they do not involve such activities and so long as “attendance at such events is not restricted (explicitly or functionally) by any protected characteristics” and attendees “are not segregated by any protected characteristics during the events.”
The memo is the latest in a series of guidance documents from OPM on complying with the executive order. The first told agencies to inventory offices involved with DEIA and place employees in them on administrative leave; a follow-up told agencies to submit plans by last Friday for closing those offices, to start issuing RIF notices to affected employees and to structure the RIFs in a way that employees could not move into other jobs within the agency.
It remains uncertain how many employees are to be affected by that order or under a separate executive order to close offices involved with “inculcating or promoting gender ideology.” Agencies have been told to put employees in the latter category on administrative leave as well, although there has been no follow-up directive as yet telling agencies to start the RIF process for them.
One of the few agencies to make a public announcement is the VA, which said that of its workforce of some 440,000, it has placed 60 on administrative leave under the DEIA order.
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