Stephen Miller’s Legal Group Targets Macy’s Diversity Policies

Macy’s Inc. is the latest company singled out by America First Legal, a conservative group that is accusing the retailer of implementing a racially discriminatory diversity plan.

The legal group led by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller asked the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate “quotas” at the company that it claims are “patently illegal.” The request to the EEOC takes aim at a five-point diversity plan Macy’s released in 2019.

AFL has sent nearly two dozen inquiries on various companies to the EEOC, which has yet to respond to the group’s allegations that diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts violate Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s ban against race discrimination. High-profile employers including NASCAR, Major League Baseball, Morgan Stanley, McDonald’s Corp., and Starbucks Corp. have also been targeted.

Macy’s plan states it intends to “achieve more ethnic diversity by 2025 at senior director level and above, with a goal of 30 percent,” and create a year-long program to “strengthen leadership skills for a selected group of top-talent managers and directors of Black/African-American, Hispanic-Latinx, Native American and Asian descent,” the group said in its letter.

AFL argued that Macy’s has since “only reinforced its commitments to recruitment and hiring policies that likely violate federal law” through its 2022 “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Annual Report.”

Following the US Supreme Court’s decision that curbed race-conscious admissions policies in higher education, AFL appears to have increased its filings against corporate diversity efforts.

In its letter, the group asked EEOC commissioners to use their discretionary powers to file a “commissioner charge” against Macy’s. Such charges can be filed by any of the five members of the agency’s leadership panel and don’t require employees or applicants to submit a discrimination charge to the agency.

Despite a recent jump in filings, commissioner charges are still relatively unusual. There were a total of 29 filed in fiscal year 2022, a leap from the three filed in 2021.

The group also sent a letter to Macy’s board of directors and chairman alleging that the retailer’s diversity efforts threaten a “waste of company assets, institutional disregard for and violations of federal civil rights laws, and breaches of fiduciary duty.”