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At Trump’s Direction, Federal Agencies Are Abandoning Discrimination Cases
The New York Times • • nation
Key Points:
- Kenni Miller, a Black man and former shift manager at Sheetz in Altoona, Pa., was fired in 2020 after a background check revealed a nonviolent felony drug conviction from his teenage years, despite having proven his capability on the job.
- Miller became part of a 2024 class-action lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against Sheetz, alleging that the company's criminal background checks disproportionately affected applicants of color.
- The EEOC dropped the case shortly after President Trump took office, following an executive order that deprioritized cases involving policies with unintentional "disparate impact" rather than intentional discrimination.
- This shift led to a widespread abandonment of civil rights cases across multiple federal agencies, creating a significant gap in civil rights enforcement with no public record of how many cases were closed.
