Donald Trump has overturned an executive order signed by Lyndon B Johnson in 1965 to jettison a requirement that federal contractors must enforce rules against segregation in their workplaces.
The General Services Administration last month issued a memo to all federal agencies referencing Trump’s order that no longer requires businesses paid with taxpayer dollars in contracts to ensure they won’t have things like segregated dining areas for Black and white employees.
State and federal laws still outlaw segregation in all companies, including government contractors, but New York University constitutional law professor Melissa Murray told NPR that Trump’s message in lifting the ban if significant and disturbing.
“It’s symbolic, but it’s incredibly meaningful in its symbolism,” she said, noting that the changes conflict with laws established by the government in the 1950’s and 1960’s to “that led to integration.”
The “fact that they are now excluding those provisions from the requirements for federal contractors speaks volumes,” Murray told NPR.
Under the Federal Acquisition Regulation — a set of rules used by federal agencies to write contracts between the government and contractors — a clause required any company receiving a contract to maintain integrated workplaces.
“The Contractor agrees that it does not and will not maintain or provide for its employees any segregated facilities at any of its establishments, and that it does not and will not permit its employees to perform their services at any location under its control where segregated facilities are maintained,” clause 52.222-21 of the FAR says.
Under the FAR, integrated facilities are defined as work areas, drinking fountains, transportation, housing, restaurants, and other areas that do not segregate based on “race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin.”
The ACLU condemned the move, saying the executive order “is not only undoing decades of federal anti-discrimination policy, spanning Democratic and Republican presidential administrations alike, but also marshalling federal enforcement agencies to bully both private and government entities into abandoning legal efforts to promote equity and remedy systemic discrimination.”
Trump’s executive orders “undermine obligations dating back to the Johnson administration that firms doing business with the U.S. government and receiving billions in public dollars are held to the highest standards in remedying and preventing bias,” the ACLU added.
The Department of Commerce, the Department of Homeland Security, and the National Institutes of Health have reportedly already notified staff overseeing federal contracts that they should begin instituting the changes outlined in Trump’s executive order.
“FAR 52.222-21, Prohibition of Segregated Facilities and FAR 52.222-26 — Equal Opportunity will not be considered when making award decisions or enforce requirements,” stated a recent notice sent by the National Institutes of Health.
At present, all businesses operating in the United States are still subject to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Trump’s executive order stands in conflict with that and state laws requiring integration, meaning any challenge between the two would likely have to be settled in court.
