[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]





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                    STANDING UP FOR THE RULE OF LAW:


                  ENDING ILLEGAL RACIAL DISCRIMINATION


                    AND PROTECTING MEN AND WOMEN IN


                       U.S. EMPLOYMENT PRACTICES

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                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                              COMMITTEE ON
                      OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY
                     U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

                             JUNE 27, 2024

                               __________

                           Serial No. 118-119

                               __________

  Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability
  
  
  
  [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 

  
  
  
  


                       Available on: govinfo.gov,
                         oversight.house.gov or
                             docs.house.gov
                             
                             
                             
             U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 
 56-320          WASHINGTON : 2024                           
                             
                             
                             
                             
                             
                             
                             
                             
                             
               COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY

                    JAMES COMER, Kentucky, Chairman

Jim Jordan, Ohio                     Jamie Raskin, Maryland, Ranking 
Mike Turner, Ohio                        Minority Member
Paul Gosar, Arizona                  Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of 
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina            Columbia
Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin            Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts
Michael Cloud, Texas                 Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia
Gary Palmer, Alabama                 Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois
Clay Higgins, Louisiana              Ro Khanna, California
Pete Sessions, Texas                 Kweisi Mfume, Maryland
Andy Biggs, Arizona                  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York
Nancy Mace, South Carolina           Katie Porter, California
Jake LaTurner, Kansas                Cori Bush, Missouri
Pat Fallon, Texas                    Shontel Brown, Ohio
Byron Donalds, Florida               Melanie Stansbury, New Mexico
Scott Perry, Pennsylvania            Robert Garcia, California
William Timmons, South Carolina      Maxwell Frost, Florida
Tim Burchett, Tennessee              Summer Lee, Pennsylvania
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia      Greg Casar, Texas
Lisa McClain, Michigan               Jasmine Crockett, Texas
Lauren Boebert, Colorado             Dan Goldman, New York
Russell Fry, South Carolina          Jared Moskowitz, Florida
Anna Paulina Luna, Florida           Rashida Tlaib, Michigan
Nick Langworthy, New York            Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts
Eric Burlison, Missouri
Mike Waltz, Florida

                                 ------                                

                       Mark Marin, Staff Director
       Jessica Donlon, Deputy Staff Director and General Counsel
                     Alan Brubaker, Senior Advisor
                James Rust, Chief Counsel for Oversight
                      David Ehmen, Senior Counsel
        Ellie McGowan, Staff Assistant and Administrative Clerk

                      Contact Number: 202-225-5074

                  Julie Tagen, Minority Staff Director
                      Contact Number: 202-225-5051

                                 ------                                
                         C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page
Hearing held on June 27, 2024....................................     1

                               WITNESSES

                              ----------                              

The Honorable Todd Rokita, Attorney General, Indiana
    Oral Statement...............................................     5

Jonathan Berry, Managing Partner, Boyden Gray, PLLC
    Oral Statement...............................................     7

Inez Feltscher Stepman, Senior Policy and Legal Analyst, 
  Independent Women's Forum
    Oral Statement...............................................     8

Maya Wiley, President and CEO, The Leadership Conference on Civil 
  and Human Rights
    Oral Statement...............................................    10

 Opening statements and the prepared statements for the witnesses 
  are available in the U.S. House of Representatives Repository 
  at: docs.house.gov.

                           INDEX OF DOCUMENTS

                              ----------                              

  * Statement for the Record, Damon Hewitt; submitted by Rep. 
  Raskin.

  * Statement for the Record, Sikh Coalition; submitted by Rep. 
  Raskin.

  * Article, Bloomberg, ``Corporate America Promised to Hire a 
  Lot More People of Color''; submitted by Rep. Burchett.

  * Letter, to 13 State Attorney Generals, July 13, 2023; 
  submitted by Chairman Comer.

  * Report, AJPH, Gender Identity Disparities in Criminal 
  Victimization; submitted by Rep. Frost.

  * Statement for the Record, Full and Equal Access for 
  Transgender Community; submitted by Rep. Frost.

  * Article, NBC, ``Black Applicants Rejected for Trump Housing 
  Finally Speak Out''; submitted by Rep. Mfume.

  * Article, New York Times, ``No Vacancies for Blacks''; 
  submitted by Rep. Mfume.

  * Article, Politico, ``Trump Moves to Gut Obama Housing 
  Discrimination Rules''; submitted by Rep. Mfume.

  * Letter, to 21 State Attorney Generals, July 19, 2023; 
  submitted by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez.

  * Report, SPLC, Introduction to Project CAPTAIN; submitted by 
  Rep. Ocasio-Cortez.

The documents listed are available at: docs.house.gov.


                    STANDING UP FOR THE RULE OF LAW:



                  ENDING ILLEGAL RACIAL DISCRIMINATION



                    AND PROTECTING MEN AND WOMEN IN



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                        Thursday, June 27, 2024

                     U.S. House of Representatives

               Committee on Oversight and Accountability

                                           Washington, D.C.

    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:02 a.m., in 
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. James Comer 
[Chairman of the Committee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Comer, Gosar, Foxx, Grothman, 
Palmer, Sessions, Biggs, Mace, Fallon, Burchett, Greene, 
Raskin, Norton, Lynch, Connolly, Khanna, Mfume, Ocasio-Cortez, 
Porter, Brown, Stansbury, Frost, Lee, Goldman, Tlaib, and 
Pressley.
    Also present: Representative Balint.
    Chairman Comer. This hearing of the Committee on Oversight 
and Accountability will come to order. I want to welcome 
everyone here.
    Without objection, the Chair may declare a recess at any 
time.
    I now recognize myself for the purpose of making an opening 
statement.
    I want to welcome everyone to this hearing before the 
Committee on Oversight. In recent years, diversity, equity, and 
inclusion, or DEI, initiatives have become a divisive subject 
in U.S. businesses, educational institutions, state 
legislatures, and here in Congress. Unfortunately, many of 
these initiatives, which many assume simply promote equal 
opportunity, have, in some cases, become integrated into 
employment practices to a point where the civil rights of 
employees are violated. DEI in some forms means preferencing 
racial categories and disfavoring other racial categories. It 
is discrimination with a fancy acronym. Racial discrimination 
is wrong, it is immoral, and it is illegal in the employment 
context.
    Next Tuesday, July 2, we will celebrate the 60th 
anniversary of the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 
into law. Title VII of that law makes it an unlawful employment 
practice to discriminate in hiring or against employees once on 
the job because of their race, color, religion, sex, or 
national origin. When employers systematically implement 
employment practices that discriminate on the basis of race, it 
does not matter that it is dressed up in a fancy acronym like 
DEI. The law says that is illegal racial discrimination, and it 
is illegal whether the victim of that discriminatory practice 
is White, Black, Native American, or any other racial category. 
All one needs to do is review the disclosures of many Fortune 
500 companies to witness the implementation of literal racial 
quotas in hiring and promotion.
    Hiring managers and executives are encouraged by their 
companies to institute hiring quotas on the basis of race or 
face cuts to their compensation or incentives. Can you imagine 
the disgust of those who crafted the Civil Rights Act to find 
out that 60 years later, some of the largest and wealthiest 
companies are still not just implementing, but publicly 
celebrating the racial discrimination at their companies? State 
attorneys general have called out companies advancing such 
discriminatory practices such as ``explicit racial quotas and 
preferences in hiring, recruiting, retention, promotion, and 
advancement.'' They also have also recognized those practices 
to include ``race-based contracting practices, such as racial 
preferences and quotas in selecting suppliers, providing overt 
preferential treatment to customers on the basis of race, and 
pressuring contractors to adopt the company's racially 
discriminatory quotas and preferences.''
    I will enter the Attorney Generals' July 13, 2023, letter 
into the record with unanimous consent.
    Without objection, so ordered.
    The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, the 
Federal Agency responsible for enforcing Federal laws against 
illegal racial discrimination and harassment in all types of 
work situations, should stand up for the rule of law and 
investigate such practices at U.S. companies. The EEOC should 
also reiterate the plain language of Title VII prohibiting 
racial discrimination in everything it does through guidance, 
public statements, data collection, litigation, or otherwise. 
Yet, under the Biden Administration, the EEOC has demonstrated 
a pattern of public activity inconsistent with the law, and 
when presented with evidence of discriminatory practices at 
companies, the EEOC appears to have taken no action at all. In 
the worst cases, EEOC appears to have filed amicus briefs 
actually defending the ability of companies to engage in 
racially discriminatory practices. We are encouraged that EEOC 
commissioner, Andrea Lucas, has been outspoken in support of 
the law, arguing, correctly, that the Title VII is violated if 
race was at all or part of the motivation for an employment 
decision.
    On March 1, 2024, I wrote the EEOC, along with Subcommittee 
Chairman Pat Fallon from Texas, seeking a briefing and 
documents and information to conduct oversight of this matter. 
Since that time, I have been alarmed as well with EEOC 
redefining sex discrimination through guidance in a way that 
will jeopardize the rights of men and women in the workplace. 
On April 29, 2024, the EEOC issued an updated workplace 
harassment enforcement guidance, its first since 1999. This 
includes new language requiring employers to permit male 
employees to use female changing areas and bathrooms. Many 
states immediately sued the EEOC after the issuance of the new 
guidance on the grounds of government overreach, and those 
states seek injunctions to prevent its implementation. EEOC 
Commissioner Lucas has called out the new guidance for 
effectively eliminating single-sex workplace facilities in 
addition to intruding on the right to freedom of speech and 
belief.
    Thank you to the witnesses appearing here today, and I now 
yield to Ranking Member Ocasio-Cortez for her opening remarks.
    Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you so much Mr. Chairman. 
Throughout history, Americans have fought for and championed 
civil rights. We fought to end segregation, discrimination, and 
advanced measures toward an integrated, diverse, multiracial 
society. And throughout our history, we have also had to 
confront the ugly legacy and backlash of bigotry, ignorance, 
and White nationalism. The arguments that protections and civil 
rights for historically marginalized populations as ``reverse 
racism'' or ``preferential'' is not new.
    We passed the Civil Rights Act and Economic Opportunity Act 
in 1964. The United States passed the Voting Rights Act in 
1965, the Fair Housing Act in 1968, and spent decades 
afterwards integrating schools, all in an effort to build a 
society where people can work and be treated equally, no matter 
their race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation. But 
throughout it all, from Little Rock, to Charlottesville to 
today, extremists have resisted these efforts to integrate 
American democracy. They weaponize fear and claim these efforts 
toward a better society are themselves unjust, 
unconstitutional, or illegal. Today's hearing is just the 
latest in a decades-long attack from right-wing extremists on 
any and all efforts to expand civil rights, equity, and freedom 
in the United States.
    Let us start with the Civil Rights Act, which is designed 
to ensure no person is discriminated against for something as 
simple as the color of their skin, their gender, or their 
religion. Before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was even passed, 
conservative anti-integrationists opposed it, arguing that the 
law would somehow violate their constitutional right to 
segregated spaces, but they lost that fight. And thanks to the 
landmark legislation of the 1960's, opportunities for Black 
Americans radically expanded. From 1959 to 1969, the poverty 
rate for Black Americans dropped nearly in half, the share of 
Black youth completing high school rose from 39 percent to 56 
percent, and the gap between White and Black incomes reached 
the lowest it had ever been, all after integrationist, pro-
civil rights policies were passed.
    Then came the conservative response afterwards. In the late 
60's, Republican President, Richard Nixon, determined to gain 
support from Southern White politicians by appealing to racism, 
promised to slow civil rights enforcement. In the 1970's, 
right-wing opponents of civil rights and integration started 
framing efforts to ensure all Americans have equal access to 
opportunities as ``reverse racism.'' And in the 1980's, 
Republicans and right-wing judges, including now Chief Justice 
John Roberts, built on that framing to advance a dubious 
argument if we do not talk about bigotry, it does not exist. 
So, instead of punishing bigoted leaders and organizations and 
societal structures and violations of the law and working to 
create a more equitable world, the law would instead pretend 
race and racism and their real-world impacts did not exist.
    This right-wing legal effort continues today. One lawyer 
alone, Edward Blum, backed by wealthy right wingers, has 
brought more than 2 dozen cases since the 1990's attempting to 
remove consideration of race entirely from key civil rights 
laws. This resistance to integration in every part of society, 
whether it be in schools, or housing, or the workforce, is an 
attempt to destroy the progress we have made toward a more 
equal and just society. But it is also an economic play, and 
that is what is important for people to understand. This is a 
way to keep the status quo that gives a handful of the most 
wealthy people in our society power and immunity and distract 
the working class from attaining the basic rights and 
protections we all deserve.
    These right-wing billionaires prey on racism, bigotry, 
anti-trans panic, and fear to drive wedges in our communities 
and prevent resources from going to public services that 
predominantly serve working-class communities. They use these 
arguments to defund our schools, to defund our communities, and 
to defund our public infrastructure. They divide us, and they 
dismantle our public housing, and then union bust, and let us 
be clear. These extremists are not just destroying the public 
institutions that working people rely upon as retaliation in 
some culture war. No, defunding services for working people is 
the point, and we have seen what happens when they pursue this 
goal.
    Last year alone, more than 4,200 books were targeted in 
right-wing attempts for censorship. Most often targeted for 
censorship were those books that cover themes related to race, 
gender, and sexual orientation. Last year, a record 510 anti-
LGBTQ bills were introduced in state legislatures, and since 
the Dobbs decision 2 years ago this week, 21 states now ban 
abortion or are more restrictive than the standard was in place 
under Roe. Those opposed to integration see all this as a 
victory, and they are not planning to stop here.
    Project 2025, the radical right-wing playbook detailing 
conservative Donald Trump's agenda for a second term, devotes 
an entire chapter to detailing the many ways that the Federal 
Government should roll back progress and turn back the clock on 
civil rights and liberties in the workplace. I will note that 
the majority of this Committee has apparently invited the 
author of that chapter to testify here today. This hearing is 
fundamentally an insult to the promise of a multiracial 
democracy that we all represent and require for prosperity for 
a working-class America. This hearing is fundamentally an 
insult to all of us.
    My Republican colleagues are going to say empty words about 
discrimination in the workplace today. They are going to play 
on fear and provide yet another opportunity for radical right-
wing extremism, the kind that says if you are not a White, or 
cisgender, or straight, or a man, you do not deserve equal 
rights, protections over your own body, and the ability to have 
control over your own life to take root. But we are not going 
to fall for it, and we are not going to let them get away with 
it. I yield back.
    Chairman Comer. The gentlelady yields back. Today we are 
joined by the Honorable Todd Rokita, who serves as the chief 
legal officer of the state of Indiana as their Attorney 
General. He previously served Indiana's 4th congressional 
District as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 2011 
to 2019. Welcome back. Jonathan Berry is a Managing Partner of 
the law firm, Boyden Gray. From 2018 to 2020, he led the U.S. 
Department of Labor's Regulatory Office. Additionally, from 
2017 to 2018, Mr. Berry served as Counsel to the Assistant 
Attorney General of the U.S. Department of Justice.
    Inez Stepman is a Senior Policy and Legal Analyst for 
Independent Women's Forum, an organization devoted to enhancing 
people's freedom, opportunities, and well-being. She is a 
Lincoln Fellow with the Claremont Institute and a Senior 
Contributor to The Federalist. Last, Maya Wiley is President 
and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, 
a coalition with more than 230 members that engages in 
legislative advocacy.
    Pursuant to Committee Rule 9(g), the witnesses will please 
stand and raise their right hand.
    Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony that you 
are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing 
but the truth, so help you God?
    [A chorus of ayes.]
    Chairman Comer. Let the record show that the witnesses 
answered in the affirmative. Thank you. You all may take a 
seat. We appreciate you being here today and look forward to 
your testimony.
    Let me remind the witnesses that we have read your written 
statement, and it will appear in full in the hearing record. 
Please limit your oral statement to 5 minutes. As a reminder, 
please press the button on the microphone in front of you so 
that it is on, and the members can hear you. When you begin to 
speak, the light in front of you will turn green. After 4 
minutes, the light will turn yellow. When the red light comes 
on, your 5 minutes have expired, and we ask that you please 
wrap up.
    I now recognize General Rokita for his opening statement.

                        STATEMENT OF TODD ROKITA

                            ATTORNEY GENERAL

                                INDIANA

    Mr. Rokita. Thank you, Chair Comer, Ranking Member Ocasio-
Cortez, and members of the Committee for inviting me to speak 
here today. It is good to see you. My name is Todd Rokita, and 
I serve as the Attorney General for the state of Indiana, an 
office where I manage over 400 employees. And prior to serving 
as Indiana's chief legal officer, I spent several years in the 
private sector as general counsel for a company that served 
other companies, each having over 100 employees. And before 
that, as you mentioned, Chair, I served as a Member of Congress 
for 8 years as the Subcommittee Chairman on Educational 
Workforce, where I served under many chairmen, including the 
one here today. So, just like that, I am sure I will be 
corrected a few times today as well.
    Chairman Comer. She does that a lot.
    Mr. Rokita. Like I said, it is good to see everybody. I 
also had the honor of serving for 8 years as Indiana's 
Secretary of State, where I managed the day-to-day operations 
of well near 100 employees. So, I believe these experiences, in 
short, give me some unique insights in how our laws regulate 
and restrict the use of race and sex in our workplace.
    The United States was founded on a basic idea, self-evident 
today as it was 250 years ago, and that is all men are created 
equal. That idea is embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment as 
well, which requires state governments to provide equal 
protection of the laws to all persons. The Fifth Amendment 
imposes similar constraints on the Federal Government. 
Likewise, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits 
invidious discrimination in the workplace, advances the goal of 
equal treatment in the private as well as public sectors.
    So, despite the importance our Nation places on equal 
protection under the law, corporate America and academic 
institutions have all too frequently embraced the notion, 
completely at odds with our founding principles, that to 
remediate racial discrimination of the past, we must somehow 
engage in racial discrimination now. For decades, that 
misguided notion was put into practice through affirmative 
action programs on college campuses. More recently, it has 
infiltrated workplaces in the form of diversity, equity, and 
inclusion, or DEI, initiatives that have become fashionable in 
the C-suites of many of America's largest companies.
    Such racial discrimination ignores the observation that 
Chief Justice Roberts made back in 2007, that the only way to 
stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop 
discriminating on the basis of race. In other words, 
eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it, 
and that is exactly what the Supreme Court recently declared in 
Students for Fair Admissions. In that case, the Court held that 
the admissions programs of Harvard College and the University 
of North Carolina violated the Constitution and civil rights 
laws because they relied on race to decide which students get 
admitted. The implications of the decision extend beyond the 
academic world because picking winners and losers based on race 
is wrong and illegal in any context.
    It follows that DEI initiatives in corporate America that 
require race-based hiring practices are, in most, if not all 
cases, likely violations of Title VII. So, that is why last 
year I, along with 12 other state attorneys general, sent a 
letter to Fortune 100 company CEOs reminding them of their 
obligations under the civil rights laws. In our letter, we 
stress that these companies cannot discriminate based on race, 
including taking discriminatory actions under the guise of DEI. 
As Judge Robert Bork once said, to make a distinction between 
persons on racial grounds is utterly irrational. That is the 
bedrock non-negotiable principle that animates all of our civil 
rights laws, and there is no DEI exception to that in the 
Constitution or in Title VII.
    Our civil rights laws also guarantee the equal treatment of 
men and women irrespective of sex. In Bostock v. Clayton 
County, the Supreme Court narrowly extended this principle, 
mistakenly, in my humble view, to hold that employers violate 
Title VII if they fire or refuse to hire an individual because 
of sexual orientation or gender identity. Critically, the 
Court's decision only concerned the hiring and firing decisions 
and specifically declined to address other issues that 
employers may encounter. To address some of the questions left 
unanswered in Bostock, my office recently issued an advisory 
opinion concerning the use of preferred pronouns in the 
workplace. We determined that neither state nor Federal law 
requires a coworker to use the preferred pronouns and name of a 
fellow employee and that an employer is likely not liable for a 
supposed misuse of pronouns. No Federal Court has reached and 
no reasonable interpretation of Title VII would support a 
different conclusion.
    So, in summary, as we continue to deal with the fallout of 
the Bostock decision, it is of utmost importance that we 
address questions like this and give employers clarity about 
what the law requires. I am committed to ensuring that all 
workplaces in Indiana appropriately balance religious liberty, 
freedom of speech, safety, collegiality, and productivity. And, 
Chairman, it is just an honor to be here and seeing my friends 
and colleagues again. Thank you very much.
    Chairman Comer. Thank you. I now recognize Mr. Berry for 
his opening statement.

                      STATEMENT OF JONATHAN BERRY

                            MANAGING PARTNER

                           BOYDEN GRAY, PLLC

    Mr. Berry. Thank you. Good morning, Chairman Comer, Ranking 
Member Ocasio-Cortez, and members of the Committee. My name is 
Jonathan Berry, and I am the Managing Partner of the law and 
public policy strategy firm, Boyden Gray PLLC. There, I provide 
strategic counsel and litigate on issues involving the 
overlapping bureaucracies of the administrative state and 
corporate America, including matters relating to diversity, 
equity, and inclusion programs in the workplace.
    I want to thank you for inviting me to testify today on the 
important subject of the recent overreach and underreach of the 
EEOC. I am honored to currently represent United States 
Conference of Catholic Bishops and other plaintiffs in 
litigation against the Commission regarding one of its recent 
rulemakings. While my views on the subject of today's hearing 
are informed by my representation of clients in this and other 
matters, I do not appear here today on behalf of any client, 
and the views I present are my own. I am also honored to bring 
with me here my 10-year-old son, Simon, to witness the 
Committee's important work.
    The Commission has an important and crucial role to play in 
protecting American workers from unlawful discrimination and 
advancing equal opportunity for all. Unfortunately, too often, 
the Commission currently is working against those objectives, 
creating the need for congressional oversight. Three problems 
stand out when it comes to the EEOC's treatment of race.
    First, it has defended DEI initiatives in the workplace, 
but those initiatives often violate Title VII. So-called 
reverse discrimination is unlawful discrimination under Title 
VII. When corporations make recruiting, training, management, 
and hiring decisions that treat non-White employees 
preferentially on the basis of race, those initiatives are 
generally unlawful. Yet the EEOC has let this discrimination go 
largely unpoliced, necessitating a surge in private lawsuits. 
Second, the Commission has sued an employer, in this case the 
Sheetz gas station chain, under Title VII's disparate impact 
provision for merely performing criminal background checks. But 
Title VII's disparate impact provision is likely 
unconstitutional, and the EEOC uses this powerful weapon 
inconsistently in any event. When the Commission employs this 
powerful tool arbitrarily, it becomes impossible for employers 
to plan around or predict how the law will be enforced. And 
third, the EEOC has continued to require that all employers 
submit workforce demographic data that breaks their employees 
down by race above a certain employer size. But it is wrong to 
require employers to classify their employees into racial 
categories and report the results, absent particularized 
suspicion of discrimination. It encourages everyone involved--
the government, the employer, and the employee--to evaluate the 
merits of a human being on racial terms.
    So, accordingly, I have three oversight recommendations for 
the Committee to consider. First, the Commission must be held 
to account for declining the stamp out racially discriminatory 
DEI programs. For instance, one firm alone that we sometimes 
work with, America First Legal, has filed over 30 
discrimination charges against gigantic companies, like Disney 
and Salesforce and IBM, whose DEI programs are facially 
discriminating on the basis of race. This Committee could 
follow up, if it choses, to demand explanation for the lack of 
prompt EEOC action on these charges. Second, the EEOC must be 
held to account for how it sets its enforcement priorities, 
particularly with regard to disparate impact liability. The 
Commission could bring suit against almost any employer 
selection procedure. Why has the EEOC targeted criminal 
background checks and not college degree requirements, which 
often have profound disparities that result? The Commission 
should be asked that question. And third, and finally, Congress 
should end the EEO-1 data collection, or at least limit its 
imposition to cases where the Commission has particularized 
suspicion. There is no need to continue this extremely broad 
data collection, and its racial classification mandate forces 
American employers to view their employees as members of racial 
categories and not simply as individual human persons 
possessing dignity given by God.
    Thank you again for the chance to testify this morning.
    Chairman Comer. Thank you. I now recognize Ms. Stepman for 
her opening statement.

                  STATEMENT OF INEZ FELTSCHER STEPMAN

                    SENIOR POLICY AND LEGAL ANALYST

                       INDEPENDENT WOMEN'S FORUM

    Ms. Stepman. Distinguished members of the Committee, I am 
honored to testify at today's much-needed hearing. I currently 
serve as senior policy and legal analyst with Independent 
Women's Forum and Independent Women's Law Center. For almost 30 
years IWF has been the leading national women's organization 
dedicated to enhancing women's freedom and well-being.
    Americans overwhelmingly agree that employers should be 
forbidden by law from discriminating on the basis of race and 
sex. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 enshrined this 
principle into law, but is this fundamental promise of a civil 
rights era, the colorblind workplace, being fulfilled by 
today's interpretation and enforcement of Title VII? I would 
argue that, unfortunately, in many respects, it is not. Under 
the guise of progress or trying to rectify past wrongs, Title 
VII and its enforcement have gone from protecting the 
colorblind workplace to undermining it, and I want to talk 
today about three ways in which that is happening.
    As the Chairman said in his opening remarks, the EEOC is 
mostly looking the other way thus far on overt racial 
discrimination when it is defended on the basis of diversity or 
inclusion or similar rationales. Nobody actually really 
disputes legally that Title VII forbids taking into account 
race or sex in employment decisions. The EEOC spends much of 
its 2,000 employees' efforts on policing, hiring, firing, or 
training criteria that even the Commission itself admits 
include no intent to discriminate. So, more on that in a 
moment, yet it is shockingly common, as we have seen from his 
testimony, for huge corporations to implement programs that 
amount to the kind of blatant racial quota setting that would 
make even Harvard University blush. These violations are 
advertised proudly.
    Executives and banking technology and consulting came 
forward in 2020 to promise to hire a concrete quota of 100,000 
Black, Latino, and Asian workers in the next decade. Companies 
like Google and Adidas declared to the press that 30 percent of 
their new positions would be filled by Black or Latino workers 
by 2025. In 2020, at the height of the BLM movement, much of 
corporate America made obviously discriminatory promises like 
these, and there is evidence that they followed through on 
those promises. Of the 300,000 jobs added by the S&P 100, in 
the year following the summer of 2020, 94 percent of them went 
to people of color.
    Using the EEOC's favorite tool, disparate impact, there can 
be no doubt then that the discrimination pendulum in America's 
biggest companies has swung past equality and meritocracy 
toward discriminating against employees who are White, male, or 
lack other favored characteristics. But in this case, it is 
combined with clear statements of discriminatory intent. Unlike 
in the education context, or soft racial preferences but never 
were quotas allowed prior to being struck down by students for 
fair admissions, making decisions even partially based on race 
was never permissible in the employment context, yet companies 
had no fear about bragging about these hard quotas.
    While Commissioner, Andrea Lucas, has sounded the alarm 
about these violations, Title VII's antidiscrimination mandate, 
the EEOC as a whole has been oddly quiet about these clear 
violations. The EEOC does have a responsibility to protect 
women from sexual harassment and discrimination in the 
workplace, but in an April 2024 guidance, the Commission does 
the opposite by redefining ``sex'' to include gender identity 
in a way that denies female employees their rights, privacy, 
and safety. The guidance explicitly states that employers who 
do not provide access to single-sex spaces on the basis of 
gender identity will be in violation, forcing women to use the 
restroom, pump breast milk, and even in some cases change or 
shower with male colleagues as a condition of employment.
    As the preeminent legal organization dedicated to 
preserving the commonsense biological definition of sex, the 
Independent Women's Law Center has already received inquiries 
from women who have already been subjected to the results of 
this confusion and redefinition, now encouraged by the EEOC. 
One woman who contacted us works with chemicals that require 
employees to shower at work every day. The employer allowed a 
male to shower with the women on the basis of reclaimed gender 
identity. That female employees were uncomfortable with this 
accommodation was largely disregarded of course. Another woman 
who contacted us tours with concerts, often in venues with 
group showers. Here, too, a man with male genitals was 
accommodated with access to female showers. Even when the women 
tried to delay their own showers, inconvenienced themselves to 
avoid him in the shower, the male employee waited in order to 
shower alongside them. Unbelievably, in the age of 
microaggressions and firing over mild jokes or offhand remarks, 
a man waiting to watch his female colleagues shower is now 
actually encouraged, not prohibited, by the EEOC.
    The EEOC does not have the power to rewrite protected 
categories of Title VII, and their invented definition of the 
word ``sex'' in the statute is creating exactly the kind of 
workplace harassment the Commission is supposed to prevent. If 
a male employee repeatedly showing his penis to unwilling 
female coworkers does not qualify as sexual harassment under 
Title VII, it is honestly hard to see what kind of workplace 
behavior would.
    American workers want to be judged by their employers on 
the basis of the quality of their credentials and work, not 
skin color or sex. Title VII's protections against 
discrimination and harassment should be enforced sanely, 
fairly, and without choosing favored or disfavored classes. 
Reforms should be made to rein in out-of-control 
interpretations contrary to the plain text of law, returning 
Title VII to its original textual and worthy purpose. Thank 
you.
    Chairman Comer. Thank you. I now recognize Ms. Wiley for 
her opening statement.

                        STATEMENT OF MAYA WILEY

                           PRESIDENT AND CEO

                      THE LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE ON

                         CIVIL AND HUMAN RIGHTS

    Ms. Wiley. Thank you, Chairman Comer, Ranking Member 
Ocasio-Cortez, and members of this Committee. My name is Maya 
Wiley, and my pronouns are ``she/her.'' I am the proud 
President and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and 
Human Rights. We will enter our 75th year next year, and we are 
the civil rights coalition that is responsible for fighting for 
and helping pass every single civil rights law you just heard 
the Ranking Member mention in her opening statement.
    I say that because we have a 74-year history both of 
standing and fighting for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when it 
faced a 60-day filibuster in the Senate--60 days, the longest 
filibuster in the history of the U.S. Senate. And ever since 
then, we have had to link arms across the most diverse 
coalition in the country that looks like a majority of the 
country, that has most major religious faiths, that has labor, 
that has educators, that has everyone, and we have linked arms 
to ensure and continue to protect the gains we have made. And 
one of the things I just want to acknowledge is that we all 
here agree that discrimination is wrong. And that is exactly 
why we know diversity, equity, and inclusion, a creation of the 
Civil Rights Act of 1964, who we commemorate in its 60th year 
this year, helped create.
    I want to underscore that DE&I--diversity, equity, 
inclusion--has been made divisive, despite the fact that a 
majority in this country and businesses have embraced it 
because it is good for the bottom line as well as advancing 
equal opportunities for everyone. And I just want to remind all 
of us that it is Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, who 
referred to himself as a self-described, red-blooded, un-woke 
capitalist, who is standing by diversity, equity, and inclusion 
because it is good for business. And the reality of what we are 
seeing is not a violation of Title VII. In fact, what the EEOC 
has done is continue to enforce Title VII, and it continues to 
be and remain the law of this land. And what we have to 
remember, too, is not only is it good for the workforce, is it 
good for business, is it good for the gross domestic product, 
is it good for a joint and shared prosperous future. It is that 
we have compelling need to continue to identify barriers to 
equal opportunity for all people.
    And it is Jamie Dimon himself, who pointed to, in a recent 
interview, the example of how, by having the way to identify, 
and he mentioned two Black employees he did not feel good about 
losing and why they were not promoted. And it was the ability 
to identify the barriers that made him say we cannot keep 
losing good people, and everything he has done is in compliance 
with the law. And we have a lot of reason to be deeply 
concerned about fearmongering over what is working because it 
is.
    And let me give you a few examples of just how this is good 
for everyone because it is because when women challenged height 
requirements for police departments, there were 10 percent of 
applicants who are White men who did not meet them, and thanks 
to those challenges, more White men who were short got jobs 
they had been precluded from. And as we continue to see all of 
the evidence around how we still see discrimination against 
people of color, against women of all races and, yes, against 
transgender Americans, we say we all deserve dignity. We all 
deserve diversity. We all benefit from it. And if we are not 
about inclusion in this country, what are we about? Thank you.
    Chairman Comer. Thank you all for your opening statements.
    Votes have been called, so the Committee will recess until 
10 minutes after the close of the final vote in this morning 
series, which I expect to be around 10 minutes after 12.
    With that, this Committee stands in recess.
    [Recess.]
    Chairman Comer. All right. The Committee will reconvene, 
and we will begin with the 5-minute questions portion of the 
hearing, and I will begin.
    Attorney General Rokita, you have joined multiple efforts 
with other state attorneys general to warn companies with 
unlawful diversity, equity, and inclusion policies the plain 
language of Title VII, prohibiting discrimination in employment 
settings. Can you speak about the progress of these efforts in 
Indiana?
    Mr. Rokita. Yes, I appreciate the question. We continue to 
monitor these companies, and you are right, it was Fortune 100. 
And so, we are basically doing that through their public 
reporting these days and their filings with the SEC and other 
places like that.
    Chairman Comer. What obstacles have you encountered 
throughout this process?
    Mr. Rokita. With the companies, it is mostly just, you 
know, the wokeness of the situation, I would say, the idea that 
you have to discriminate against people in order to please 
others----
    Chairman Comer. Have you got----
    Mr. Rokita [continuing]. And not on the weakness of a C-
suite to stand up on principle and morals and do the right 
thing for everybody.
    Chairman Comer. Right. Have you had obstacles from blue 
state attorney generals?
    Mr. Rokita. I believe they wrote a competing letter that 
was wrong on the points. In order to deal with those attorneys 
general wanted to have done in the letter, you have to gut the 
Civil Rights Act.
    Chairman Comer. Uh-huh.
    Mr. Rokita. Right?
    Chairman Comer. Right.
    Mr. Rokita. Which is pretty plain on its face that you are 
not supposed to discriminate on sex, religion, color at all.
    Chairman Comer. Right.
    Mr. Rokita. And so, the only way to deal with those 
attorneys general want to have done is to gut Title VII.
    Chairman Comer. So, what could the EEOC be doing for states 
who are seeking to end unlawful employment practices?
    Mr. Rokita. Well, you know, I associate with the fellow 
next to me in his testimony when he said you got to rein the 
EEOC back in.
    Chairman Comer. OK.
    Mr. Rokita. They have taken liberties, and that is to put 
it charitably, regarding the interpretation on Bostock and 
other similar cases.
    Chairman Comer. Right.
    Mr. Rokita. And so, until you get the reforms that the 
gentleman was talking about done, it is going to be hard or get 
people who respect the rule of law in there.
    Chairman Comer. Right. Mr. Berry, in your testimony, you 
discussed how the EEOC recently filed a lawsuit against Sheetz 
Incorporated alleging racially discriminatory hiring practices. 
It is a matter of saying that EEOC has declined to enforce 
Title VII against other companies with actual and literally 
explicit restrictions in their employment practices that are 
based on race. So, is the EEOC suing companies over seemingly 
neutral policies like requiring criminal background checks and 
appropriate use of enforcement resources and lot of more 
explicit policies based on race at U.S. companies that you have 
observed in your work?
    Mr. Berry. That is 100 percent correct, Mr. Chairman. The 
EEOC is going out of its way to develop these disparate impact 
lawsuits that are really rather intricate, like the Sheetz 
lawsuit, and ignoring, as best we can tell, charges against 
companies that just right there in big print on their websites 
say we are discriminating on the basis of race.
    Chairman Comer. So, what should the EEOC be doing about 
unlawful company DEI practices based exclusively on race?
    Mr. Berry. The EEOC should be taking very serious 
investigatory and litigation action against those companies 
that are transgressing the core text of Title VII.
    Chairman Comer. Ms. Stepman, we have recently seen the EEOC 
issue new guidance on sexual harassment in the workplace, its 
first time since 1999. In your work with the Independent 
Women's Forum, can you describe how your organization is 
committed to protecting men and women in the workplace and how 
EEOC's new guidance might jeopardize safety and freedom of 
employees?
    Ms. Stepman. Absolutely. So, there are instances where we 
have an over and underenforcement problem, right? As my fellow 
witnesses have said, we see facial violations of companies that 
announced programs are clearly contrary to the plain text of 
Title VII and the interpretation of Title VII. And yet we see 
no enforcement of those, and then we see sort of these witch 
hunts on other topics. And in this case, we see the EEOC 
interpreting the word ``sex'' way beyond not just what the text 
says, but way beyond what Bostock says. And putting women in 
the situation in work where in any other context, the behavior 
of their colleagues would be considered harassment, it would be 
what the EEOC is actually supposed to be protecting women 
against, and yet they are doing nothing. They are actually 
worse than nothing. They are encouraging it.
    Chairman Comer. Well, so in my last question, can you 
explain what actions the EEOC can take to appropriately 
interpret Supreme Court precedent and make clear that it is 
protecting and supports men and women in their workplace?
    Ms. Stepman. Yes. It would start with rescinding the most 
recent guidance where they explicitly go beyond Bostock. 
Bostock is very clear. It says it does not apply to single-sex 
spaces, to locker rooms, to showers, to bathrooms, but this 
guidance explicitly does apply in those places, so it goes well 
beyond Bostock. And, again, these are exactly the places where 
female employees are likely to encounter males, you know, 
identifying as females in a way that, like, is very invasive to 
women's privacy, to their safety even, and makes them very 
uncomfortable at work.
    Chairman Comer. All right. Well, thank you very much. I now 
recognize Ranking Member Ocasio-Cortez for her question.
    Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. Ms. 
Wiley, I found some of the opening statements quite interesting 
that we heard from our witnesses here today, plenty of claims 
being thrown out there. One I thought that was particularly 
interesting was the idea that a company, a large company, 
perhaps a company like Disney or any other employer, aspiring 
to maybe have about 30 percent of new hires and having a goal 
of 30 percent of new hires being from diverse backgrounds or 
people of color, and the assertion that that kind of goal was 
anti-White discrimination. I wanted to break things down in 
terms of the numbers a little bit. About what percentage of 
Americans are non-Hispanic White? I think we are hearing from 
the Census, like 59, 60 percent. Is that right?
    Ms. Wiley. That is about right. Yes.
    Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. OK. So, about 59 percent of all 
Americans are White. That would mean about 40 percent of people 
are people of color of the U.S. population. And it seems to be 
that the argument is that seeking to have 30 percent of your 
hires be people of color is anti-White discrimination. Can you 
shed some light on the logic of that for me, please?
    Ms. Wiley. No, because that is not logical. What I can say 
is what is factually accurate around the state of our laws, and 
that is aspirations are not unconstitutional. Aspirations are 
not antithetical or in any way a violation of Title VII under 
our Court's precedence or based on the plain language of Title 
VII, and, in fact, this is exactly what the fearmongering is 
doing.
    We know, for example, that the Equal Employment Opportunity 
Commission had a million complaints between 2010 and 2018--a 
million complaints. Anybody can file one. A White man who is 
experiencing discrimination on the job can file one and it will 
be investigated. That is the job of the EEOC. What we are 
hearing and seeing is a large swath of cases that are based on 
race that are people of color, that are women of all races. In 
fact, the majority of hostile environment harassment cases are 
disproportionately women of all races, and Black women in 
particular, and that is in the statistics that they provide on 
the website. I think the question here is not whether people 
can file complaints and charges with the EEOC. It is who is 
filing them and why, and the aspirations themselves are 
consistent with our goals.
    Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Very well said. Thank you. And I find 
that point so interesting and fascinating because with all of 
this discussion around how diversity, equity, and inclusion 
policies are discriminatory in the long history of anti-
integration in this country, and reaction and opposition to the 
Civil Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, and more. I think one 
of the things that we need to take a look at is the world that 
they are fighting for, a world without diversity, equity, and 
inclusion policies, which is to say the default, which is to 
say workplaces that are honestly kind of like Congress because 
the population of the United States, as you mentioned, is about 
59 percent White. Do you know what percentage of Congress is 
White?
    Ms. Wiley. I do not, but I know that we finally have 60 
Members of the congressional Black Caucus, which is progress.
    Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Yes. But even then, 75 percent. White 
Americans make up 59 percent of the U.S. population, 75 percent 
of Congress. Men are 50 percent of the population and make 
about 70 percent of Congress. When we see institutions of 
power, and that is reflected in almost any institutional 
organization of power, and when we even just try to have the 
basic acknowledgement that it would be good to encourage not an 
unreflective body, not unreflective workforce, but a workforce 
that barely even reaches the proportion of representation of 
what every day Americans look like, that somehow anti-White 
discrimination, anti-male discrimination, anti-straight 
discrimination, anti-cisgender discrimination. I mean, come on, 
folks. What are we doing here? What are we doing here?
    And last, Ms. Wiley, I was wondering if you could also just 
shed some light on the economic impact of civil rights 
legislation and if you could draw that link between civil 
rights protections and policies and outcomes that help the 
working class.
    Ms. Wiley. Yes. One of the critical things we have seen as 
a result of having civil rights protections and having them 
enforced is we have seen an increase in participation and 
people getting to the middle class of the American country, 
particularly people of color long denied fair and equal 
opportunities, and I think it is really important to understand 
that that has had widespread societal benefits. For example, 
thanks to civil rights laws, we have seen an increase in the 
life expectancy of people who are Black, and not only Black, 
other people of color, and that is something we all want.
    One of the things that is so important to understand about 
the Sheetz case because we keep hearing about this and it is 
being misrepresented, what the Sheetz case says is not you have 
to hire anybody who is a person of color no matter of their 
criminal background. It is saying you cannot use what is 
colorblind on its face but has the practical effect of denying 
employment if it does not bear a relationship to the job that 
is going to be done. You can absolutely say an accountant who 
has been convicted of absconding with money, you do not have to 
hire that person. The reason that the Sheetz case is a lawsuit 
is because they did not have evidence that they needed to do 
that, and it was discriminating against qualified Black 
applicants.
    Chairman Comer. Very good. The Chair now recognizes Mr. 
Palmer from Alabama.
    Mr. Palmer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Last July 13, state 
attorney generals from across the country co-signed a letter 
directed to the CEOs of Fortune 100 companies, warning them of 
the serious legal consequences over race-based employment 
preferences and diversity policies. They did that in 
consequence of the decision of Students for Fair Admissions v. 
Harvard. Mr. Berry, can you speak to the impact or 
applicability of that case on the legality of DEI corporate 
policy in both the Federal and state contexts?
    Mr. Berry. Certainly. So, while it arises in the context of 
university admissions, the Harvard case looks at some of the 
most commonly proffered justifications for racial preferences 
and finds them lacking as a matter of strict scrutiny 
constitutionally and statutorily under Title VI. That 
disapproval of the presented pedagogical benefits of skin 
color, not viewpoints, skin color diversity, for example, that 
was rejected, and those same kinds of rationales for skin color 
diversity would not be available in the Title VII context. I 
think it is the most natural reading.
    Mr. Palmer. So, should companies look to modify their 
hiring practices?
    Mr. Berry. So, some are. Others have not gotten the memo 
and are still pretending that these are completely distinct, 
which is not a good reading of it.
    Mr. Palmer. But arguing DEI is good for business, is that 
not corporatism over individual rights?
    Mr. Berry. So, historically, moneymaking has never been a 
judicially cognizable rationale for racial discrimination, and 
there is no reason we should be starting with that now.
    Mr. Palmer. Thank you for that clarification. Mr. Rokita, I 
think your state was one of the states that were included in 
those letters to the Fortune 500 companies. The Democrat state 
attorneys general criticized this letter. They condemned it for 
its tone of intimidation, which purposely seeks to undermine 
efforts to reduce racial inequalities in corporate America. How 
do you respond to that critique?
    Mr. Rokita. Well, the fact of the matter is attorneys 
general have a duty to enforce the law. And what we were doing 
in that letter, unapologetically, was enforcing Title VII, 
which says it is unlawful to discriminate on the basis of sex, 
color, religion, and that is exactly what a DEI program does. 
By definition, it has to. It has to go against Title VII. And 
it is surprising because we are all celebrating here, and in 
most places, how good Title VII has been over the decades. I 
have heard testimony and comments from both sides of the aisle 
here today, and to have attorney generals say, well, enforcing 
Title VII is now threatening is disheartening and confusing and 
sad. So, we stand by our letter. Where appropriate, whenever we 
can, we will enforce the law.
    Mr. Palmer. So, you are basically saying that you want to 
protect the rights of all Americans----
    Mr. Rokita. Exactly right.
    Mr. Palmer [continuing]. In terms of their opportunity to 
gain employment.
    Mr. Rokita. Just as the Civil Rights Act envisioned.
    Mr. Palmer. Yes. And I agree with you, and I am grateful 
for the position that you have taken on that. Ms. Stepman, in 
your role as Senior Policy Legal Analyst for IWF, you have 
promoted policies that advance women's rights. I have been 
involved with IWF for many years, having worked in the think 
tank world, and really very appreciative of what your 
organization has done. What does some of these policies look 
like, from your perspective, in terms of your efforts to end 
discrimination across the board in regard to women?
    Ms. Stepman. Right now, we are focusing a lot on protecting 
the rights of women under both Title VII and Title IX, in the 
face of a redefinition of the word ``sex,'' that somehow 
eviscerates all of the protections that women have counted on, 
relied on, fought for, when it comes to males who claim 
identity as the opposite sex. And in the Title VII context, as 
I said in my testimony, we have already received inquiries from 
women who are being forced to shower with fully intact males as 
part of their job. Again, you know, it is funny in the context 
where the definition that the EEOC enforces of ``harassment'' 
is in so many other cases so stretched, right, you know. A 
straight joke, an unintentional remark, right, can be 
characterized as creating a hostile working environment on the 
basis of sex, and yet, a man waiting to shower with his 
colleagues to see them naked in the shower is considered not 
just not qualifying as harassment, but actually something that 
is required by the EEOC. Well, it is not required by Title VII.
    Mr. Palmer. Just one last point here, Mr. Chairman, is that 
the Biden Administration dropped over almost 1,500 pages of 
regulations that redefined ``sex' to include gender identity. 
In other words, they have difficulty in defining what a woman 
is. In your opinion, what was the Biden Administration's 
primary goal in administering these regulations?
    Ms. Stepman. I mean, I cannot speak for the Biden 
Administration, but it seems to be to cater to their own 
activist side. This is definitely not good for women. This has 
consequences, far reaching, and it is actually, frankly, that 
the regulations, as you mentioned, are 1,577 pages long. There 
is a lot in there. This redefinition of ``sex'' obviously has 
massive consequences for women in sports, in locker rooms, but 
there is a lot else in there that is bad for everybody. These 
regulations gut due process and contravenes of Federal Courts 
who have said that it is necessary to provide every American 
with due process when accusing them of something as serious as 
sexual harassment. They eat into what the Supreme Court has 
clearly said as protected speech in terms of, for example, 
using pronouns that match the biological sex of a person and 
also just, you know, any kind of remarks about, for example, 
the role of men and women in society.
    You have seen the definition under Title IX of 
``harassment'' expand and expand, expand, and, once again, in 
these regulations that is put into guidance, and now regulation 
by the Biden Administration, in a way that is totally contrary 
to the idea of free speech and is, frankly, insulting to the 
idea, again, that we are trying to prevent, which is actual 
sexual harassment that everyone would recognize this.
    Mr. Palmer. Thank you for your testimony. I yield back.
    Chairman Comer. Thank you.
    Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Mr. Chair, apologies. I have a UC 
request. I would like to seek unanimous consent to enter into 
the record this follow-up letter from 21 AGs stating that the 
July 13, 2023 letter from Republican AGs as ``disguises 
providing information regarding antidiscrimination law, but, in 
fact, takes direct aim at efforts to broaden recruitment and 
address inequities meant to break down historic barriers.''
    Chairman Comer. Without objection, so ordered.
    The Chair now recognizes Ms. Brown from Ohio.
    Ms. Brown. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am deeply 
disappointed by some of what we have heard today from the other 
side of the aisle and by the very basis of this hearing. Our 
Nation's biggest strength is our diversity and our willingness 
to embrace it. Instead of applauding diversity, equity, and 
inclusion in the workforce, my colleagues on the other side of 
the aisle are threatened by it and would like to get rid of it. 
They want us to believe DEI programs are racist and sexist, 
which simply could not be more further from the truth. 
Supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion across sectors is 
not only right and just, but it is essential to ensuring 
talented, intelligent, and qualified individuals have 
opportunities to succeed. Diversity in the workforce has been 
shown to increase profits. According to Glassdoor, over 75 
percent of job seekers say diversity is an important factor 
when considering a job opportunity. Employees who work in 
diverse and inclusive environments are more likely to stay with 
their employer.
    Last month, Congresswoman Haley Stevens and I introduced 
the Diverse Cybersecurity Workforce Act to promote diversity in 
the cybersecurity field. Let us break down the makeup of the 
cybersecurity workforce. Nine percent are Black, 4 percent are 
Hispanic, 1 percent is Native American, and only 24 percent are 
women. There are over hundreds of thousands of unfilled 
cybersecurity roles in this country ready to be filled, and 
they should reflect the strategic diversity of this country. 
Diversifying the cybersecurity workforce is just one example of 
how diversity, equity, and inclusion makes our country safer, 
our economy stronger, and our diverse communities more 
prosperous. DEI programs are needed and necessary.
    So, Ms. Wiley, if you could share with us why it is 
important for both the private and public sector to be 
intentional about incorporating diversity, equity, and 
inclusion efforts, particularly in recruitment and talent 
development.
    Ms. Wiley. Thank you for that question, and as corporations 
themselves have pointed out, both being in compliance with the 
law as they do it, but it has increased their ability to be 
competitive. The more diverse the workplace, the more 
competitive the business. There is data and research behind 
this. In addition, it helps them attract better applicants for 
their jobs. And they know it, they have been hearing from 
people they have been trying to hire that they are looking for 
diverse workplaces, and it has increased the job satisfaction 
of people on the job.
    One of the biggest misunderstandings about DE&I programs is 
what they do because a huge part of what they do is give 
employees ways to get to know each other and find ways of 
working together effectively. So, when we are talking about 
diversity, equity, and inclusion, we need to remember that it 
is identifying unfair barriers to opportunity for highly 
qualified people, whether it is promotion or hiring, as well as 
to ensure that employees are working well together, enjoying 
the workplace, and wanting to stay there. That is good for 
everyone, and it is nondiscriminatory. It does advance our 
civil rights.
    The only last point I want to make about this because we 
keep talking about this in the wrong ways, the right way to 
think about this is to think about the fact that while we have 
made progress, and we celebrate it, that we at the same time 
seen research that if your name sounds White, and you have the 
exact same resume as the person whose named sounds Black, exact 
same resume--these are experiments, these are tests, this is 
research--you are half as likely to get the job or 26 percent 
less likely to get the job if you are the Black person or if 
you have a Black-sounding name or a Latino name. That is not 
fair, equal opportunity. It is discrimination masking in 
colorblind ways in the law. And our case law is designed to say 
you do not get to hide behind the fact that you have not said 
it out loud.
    Ms. Brown. Thank you for that. And while it is important to 
focus on increasing diversity in recruitment efforts, it is 
also important to focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion in 
employee retention. Can you tell us how Title VII helps with 
employee retention, Ms. Wiley?
    Ms. Wiley. Well, essentially, I use this example with CEO 
Jamie Dimon from JPMorgan Chase, who is a huge proponent of 
DE&I programs and has said he is sticking by them like those 21 
attorney generals have said. But part of what it helped him do 
is see when he was losing talent, he did not want to lose Black 
employees who are passed over for promotion. It helped identify 
where and how they could create more fair, more practically 
important opportunities to ensure that the opportunities were 
available for advancement for people who are Black who are 
qualified for the promotion. It is retention and it is 
retention in compliance with Title VII. It is why we have to 
ensure that we are not being blind to where and how we are 
harming full and fair and equal opportunity.
    Ms. Brown. Thank you. My time has expired.
    Chairman Comer. The Chair now recognizes Dr. Foxx from 
North Carolina.
    Ms. Foxx. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank the 
witnesses for being here today. Welcome our colleague, former 
Congressman Rokita, now Attorney General.
    Attorney General Rokita, as I have said before, the EEOC is 
detached from reality. Their harassment guidance from April 29 
is nothing more than a homage to leftist activists who want 
Americans to conform to their warped political ideology, from 
the mandated use of pronouns to a denial of biological facts. 
The EEOC seems more interested in appeasing the mob than 
undertaking commonsense policymaking to protect workers. File 
this away as another item in the long list of failures 
spearheaded by this Agency.
    The EEOC's guidance from April 29 states that harassment 
covered by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act includes, 
``repeated and intentional use of a name or pronoun 
inconsistent with the individual's known gender identity, 
misgendering'' and ``the denial of access to a bathroom or 
other sex segregated facility consistent with the individual's 
gender identity.'' The EEOC claims to be implementing the 
Supreme Court's Bostock decision with this guidance. Do you 
think the EEOC is overstepping its authority and going beyond 
the Bostock decision with the April 29 guidance?
    Mr. Rokita. For sure, Chairwoman. Thank you for the 
question. It is going way beyond Title VII, which, again, Title 
VII is just about sex, religion, color, terms that are very 
clear. Now, what the Bostock decision did is, and as I said in 
my opening remarks, I think they got it wrong, in my humble 
opinion, but it is the law of the land. They went a little bit 
further in the hiring/firing decision to include same-sex 
employees and transgender, but that is it, just in the hiring 
and firing. These other things that the EEOC has read in are 
like some kind of wish list of things that just simply are not 
there.
    Ms. Foxx. In your testimony, you did note that their 
guidance runs foul the First Amendment and even admits to it. 
Can you elaborate on that and speak to why the EEOC would 
knowingly do that?
    Mr. Rokita. Well, what I do know is that we analyzed 
Federal and Indiana law. Clearly, we have an official opinion 
published on this, and there are First Amendment implications 
to requiring to call someone by their preferred pronoun or not, 
and you cannot compel that kind of speech, and so the EEOC 
guidance on that is completely wrong. We do not find that there 
is a requirement for either employer or other employees to call 
someone by that certain employee's preferred pronoun.
    Ms. Foxx. So, would you agree that the EEOC should address 
your concerns with this harassment guidance that you have 
raised?
    Mr. Rokita. No. I associate myself with the testimony that 
was given a little bit earlier that these wrongheaded guidance, 
which really do not have the force and effect of law, their 
interpretations really need to be rescinded.
    Ms. Foxx. Thank you. Ms. Stepman, can you speak to how the 
EEOC believes it has the authority to go beyond the Supreme 
Court's most thoughtful decision with the April 29th harassment 
guidance?
    Ms. Stepman. Yes. I mean, I think the Attorney General 
really intimated the reason there. I mean, there is a 
longstanding now problem with agencies putting out guidance, 
not even going through the APA rulemaking process, right, which 
is itself a kind of replacement for democracy and 
constitutional governance. Going beyond even those APA 
standards that at least require notice and comment, have all 
kinds of safeguards on it to just issuing a memo, issuing a 
guidance and saying, hey, this is how we are going to interpret 
the law, it may be very, very different from how courts have 
interpreted the law in the case of Bostock. It may be very 
different from the plain text of the law, but this is how we 
are interpreting the law now, by bureaucratic fiat. And 
basically, it is a heads up to all the people who would be 
covered under that law, and it is very effective, but it is not 
the way that governance is supposed to work in this country.
    Ms. Foxx. Thank you. In your testimony, you suggest that 
harassment should be defined objectively, such as the standard 
in Davis v. Moore County Board of Education. How would that 
differ from the EEOC's overreaching new harassment guidance?
    Ms. Stepman. Yes. As we have mentioned, there is both an 
over and underenforcement with harassment. On the one hand, 
these kinds of either unintentional or straight remarks, they 
could be added up by different acts in office, right? One guy 
might have made an off-color joke one time in front of a female 
employee. Another employee has a picture of his wife at the 
beach on his desk, right? And these little incidents, even 
though they are not severe, they are not pervasive, they are 
not objectively offensive, right, can add up into a liability 
for the employer.
    But we have seen since the 1991 Act, in particular, has 
been a kind of move by employers to police and micromanage the 
speech and opinions of their employees for fear of offending 
the most offendable among us, and that has really led to a 
situation if we are worried about diversity in the workplace, 
what about diversity of thought? People are afraid to speak 
their minds--more than 60 percent in a lot of these polls at 
work--because employers are very, very careful about opening 
themselves to liability in that way. And then on the flip side, 
as I said----
    Ms. Foxx. Thank you, Ms. Stepman, we are out of time. I 
appreciate it. Sorry, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Comer. You are good. Thank you, Dr. Foxx. And the 
Chair now recognizes Mr. Frost from Florida.
    Mr. Frost. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to start off by 
saying that I find that bigotry, transphobia, and outright 
attacks on our LGBTQ+ community, these attacks that we have 
heard in this hearing today are disgusting and unacceptable. 
Ms. Wiley, we have heard a lot of bigotry in this room today, 
highly uncomfortable to sit here as one of these witnesses used 
their testimony time to, I guess, complain about the fact that 
maybe too many Black and Brown people are getting jobs is what 
that sounded like.
    Once again, Republicans are trying to stoke fear by 
claiming that transgender people using the correct locker room 
somehow endangers cisgender women, yet research shows that it 
is trans folks who are in danger. Trans folks are more than 4 
times likely as cisgender people to be the victims of violent 
crime, including sexual assault. And groups who support victims 
of sexual assault agree with this, bipartisan, nonpartisan 
groups, dozens of groups, including the National Alliance to 
End Sexual Violence, they signed a letter supporting full and 
equal access to locker rooms for trans folks.
    So, I ask unanimous consent to enter this letter into the 
record, as well as a study by Williams Institute that shows the 
high rates of victimization for transgender individuals.
    Chairman Comer. Without objection, so ordered.
    Mr. Frost. I want to turn to the EEOC's final rule on how 
to implement Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which, I will 
remind my colleagues, passed the U.S. House of Representatives 
with over 300 votes, with over 200 co-sponsors, a bipartisan 
piece of legislation that my colleagues did not have any 
problems with until they found out that maybe we can use it as 
a wedge issue to rev up some of our bigoted voters for the 
election this year. This important act requires employers to 
accommodate workers with limitations caused by pregnancy, 
childbirth, or medical conditions. In its rule, the EEOC makes 
it clear that pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical 
conditions includes abortion care.
    Ms. Wiley, my colleagues do not seem to understand why this 
is so important. Could you walk us through that and explain the 
potential consequences of undermining this important 
protection?
    Ms. Wiley. Well, I think, Congressman, you just did. I 
think that is a perfect explanation about the importance of the 
rulemaking to protect people from discrimination. And here is 
one of the things that I want to appreciate Attorney General 
Rokita for is the acknowledgement that it is the Supreme Court 
of the United States of America. In fact, a Neil Gorsuch 
opinion, a conservative justice that found that Title VII's 
prohibition on sex discrimination also prohibits employers from 
firing an employee ``simply for being transgender.'' So, what 
we are hearing from the EEOC is it is taking to heart the 
directive from the Supreme Court that the plain language of 
Title VII and its prohibition against sex discrimination covers 
people who are transgender. And by the way, and as we know with 
all civil rights laws, when we protect the most vulnerable, we 
protect everyone.
    The reason it is so critically important is because those 
protections extend to everyone, and we should remember that 
because it is one of the greatest lessons that we have seen and 
why we should absolutely refuse to allow fearmongering about 1 
percent of the U.S. population. The transgender community in 
the United States is 1 percent of the U.S. population. And so, 
the idea that states and localities, 200 municipalities, 18 
states that are already providing the protections against 
discrimination we are talking about, some of them for years 
have not seen the fear, the violence, any of the things that we 
are hearing today. And the reason we are hearing it is because 
there is not a fact-based disagreement, but an ideological one. 
And what we should be dealing with is facts because everyone is 
protected by our civil rights laws--everyone--and it is the 
facts that ensure we are protecting the most vulnerable.
    Mr. Frost. Thank you so much, Ms. Wiley. I do not have much 
time left to get to my other questions, but I just wanted to 
let you keep talking because I agree with everything that you 
just said. And it is just a shame to sit in these hearings, 
watching my colleagues attack programs that also are designed 
to help veterans. So, to attack these programs is to attack 
what I consider true patriotism, which is more than a bald 
eagle bearing flag. It is about loving the people who live in 
the country, no matter who they are. Thank you. I yield back.
    Chairman Comer. The Chair recognizes Mr. Biggs from 
Arizona.
    Mr. Biggs. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you witnesses for 
being here.
    Andrea Lucas, who was a commissioner of the EEOC, published 
an article warning that race-conscious corporate diversity 
programs may violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which 
prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, 
color, sex, religion, or national origin. Mr. Rokita, in your 
written testimony, I am quoting from it now, it says, ``DEI 
programs that consider a job applicant or employee's race or 
color in hiring, retention, promotion, and other terms, 
conditions, or privileges of employment could be considered 
unlawful under Indiana's Civil Rights Act.'' Is that also true 
under Federal law?
    Mr. Rokita. Thank you for the question. Yes, Indiana's law 
in several respects mirrors the Federal law. So, the point 
there I was making is that Title VII prohibits race-conscious 
employment actions, period, full stop. It does not matter how 
the program is labeled.
    Mr. Biggs. And, Ms. Stepman, in your written testimony, you 
say something similar. It said, ``Instead of upholding a system 
in which all employees, regardless of their race, sex, or other 
characteristics irrelevant to work performance, are judged on 
their merit, talent, qualifications, grit, intelligence, or any 
other of the myriad qualities that make a good hire, too often, 
Title VII, in practice, as it exists today, not only fails to 
do so, it does the opposite.'' How so, and can you expand on 
it, please?
    Ms. Stepman. Sure. Again, we have the same story of over 
and underenforcement, on the one hand, completely ignoring 
publicly delivered and announced racial quotas. And I am sorry, 
announcing that 30 percent of your workforce will be of a 
particular race by a particular date is a quota. It is an 
obvious quota. It is the kind of obvious quota that even 
university admissions departments cannot say or are reluctant 
to say even before SFFA and it is forbidden by Title VII. 
Somehow these companies have very little fear of announcing 
these things to the press. And while on the other hand, they do 
have to be careful when, for example, as the Sheetz case--it 
has been repeatedly brought up here--they use a neutral 
qualification, like not, you know, screening out job applicants 
who have felonies on their record, the sort of policy 
considerations about that, about mainstreaming inmates back 
into society. Those are irrelevant to the point. This is a 
neutral qualification that the employer is using, and yet they 
find themselves having to show, and being on the defensive in 
having to show, this very tight connection to the job in the 
way that the EEOC enforces Title VII.
    So, on the one hand, we have a neutral qualification and 
people are being hauled into court for using it. On the other 
hand, we have blatant racial quotas that are being ignored by 
the EEOC.
    Mr. Biggs. So, Mr. Berry, you wrote, ``The EEOC has 
defended DEI initiatives in the workplace even when those 
initiatives create the very Title VII violations that the EEOC 
is entrusted to stamp out.'' Expand on that, please.
    Mr. Berry. Certainly. So, the Commission has taken the 
position, we have seen a couple of times today, which is to 
equivocate between the existence of disparities and an actual 
intentional discrimination. And repeatedly, over and over 
again, the Commission has declined to take action against 
companies that are saying the quiet part out loud. They are 
saying we are going to have, come hell or high water, greater 
percentages of certain racial categories reflected, not because 
we have done a labor market analysis, but because we think that 
a certain kind of racial balancing is appropriate. The exact 
kind of interest the Supreme Court has said is grossly 
inappropriate.
    Mr. Biggs. And so, does that get to what you talk about in 
your testimony extensively about disparate impact liability?
    Mr. Berry. Yes, exactly. Disparate impact liability is very 
inconsistently enforced, and is not being brought to bear, as 
best I can tell, against the widespread practice of college 
degree requirements as a screening mechanism.
    Mr. Biggs. Mr. Rokita, is tying one's continued employment 
or pay to statistical data, which Ms. Stepman has talked about 
as being perhaps a quota, is that in any way aspirational and 
protected?
    Mr. Rokita. No, I do not think so.
    Mr. Biggs. Ms. Stepman, any comment?
    Ms. Stepman. Yes. I guess my only comment would be that I 
agree with my fellow witness that the real disagreement here is 
whether any disparity, whether racial, sex, or on any other 
basis, is suspect immediately as created by discrimination. 
There are disparities in everything. There is virtually no 
qualification that an employer could ever set that would have 
no race or sex disparities. So, that is how the EEOC looks at 
the issue in this way. What it really does is expands its own 
power because it is arbitrary.
    Whatever issue the EEOC looks at, whatever qualification 
will spit out some kind of disparity, and so, but they do not 
look at other qualifications, as my witness also said, my 
fellow witness, for example, using college degrees as a 
qualification. Fewer men have college degrees. Fewer Black 
Americans have college degrees, right? Those are disparities 
that exist, but the EEOC does not look at that qualification 
and say, well, it is against our civil rights law to require a 
college degree, probably because that would be very unpopular 
with their friends in universities.
    Mr. Biggs. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My time has expired.
    Chairman Comer. The gentleman's time has expired. The Chair 
recognizes Ms. Lee from Pennsylvania.
    Ms. Lee. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just to pick up where my 
colleague from Florida left off when he ended. It is not just 
that we have colleagues here in this Committee who are making 
the claim that too many Black folks are getting jobs, but 
indeed, it feels like the entire premise of the cultural war 
that we are seeing against diversity, that we are seeing 
against equitable practices that might possibly level the 
playing field, right, that there are too many Black folks who 
are getting jobs. There are too many Black folks who are 
getting degrees. There are too many Black folks who are getting 
opportunities that were not historically for them.
    So, to just remind people why we are here, the reason DEIA 
policies were even created was to right existing wrongs. The 
reality is, is that we have some members of this Committee who 
were alive during Jim Crow, they experienced segregation 
firsthand, yet now they are acting like we are suddenly in a 
colorblind society, that we do not need to codify protections 
or that the only victims here are wealthy or the White or the 
privileged. How easily we forget.
    But we know statistically that they are not the ones whose 
communities have been intentionally polluted or targeted by 
police or the war on drugs. Their neighborhoods have not been 
redlined. Their schools have not been decimated by racist, 
inequitable funding schemes that commonwealths like 
Pennsylvania, my own, are finally recognizing as harmful and 
attempting to fix. Lest we forget, the reason HBCUs and other 
minority-serving institutions exist is because we were not 
accepted into predominantly White institutions. They are not 
targeted by how they look or how they dress or how their hair 
grows.
    Truthfully, we recognize that this crusade has been going 
on since indeed the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, if not 
earlier. Every time Black folks or Brown folks or women or 
queer folks or the disabled are able to achieve some semblance 
of equity, we continue to be demonized or face ad hominem 
attack, so we did not earn our spot or we do not belong here, 
to ensure that they can continue to concentrate wealth and 
power with the few.
    Ms. Wiley, in your opening statement, you said that this 
kind of weaponization of civil rights was nothing new. Could 
you please elaborate on that?
    Ms. Wiley. Well, sadly, and one of the reasons we have 
disparate impact recognized by the Supreme Court of the United 
States is because every single time we have made advancements 
in civil rights laws, what we have seen is active efforts to 
skirt them, as well as not paying attention to whether or not 
someone is qualified for the job that you are hiring.
    So, again, sadly, at every turn, we have been having to 
fight to protect the gains even as we can quantify how much it 
has benefited every single one in society. And just because we 
are talking a lot about race, and I do not want to lose gender 
in this. Going back to police departments, we made real 
progress, as I said, not just with getting women on the police 
forces, but improving the opportunity for White men who were 
being excluded because of things that did not have anything to 
do with the job like height. But it stalled about 20 years ago 
at 12 percent women, and even ``Police Chief Magazine'' 
recently has been raising the alarm bell that police 
departments are utilizing measures of, say, upper body strength 
that are not necessary to qualify to be a police officer, that 
may be keeping women off the force.
    But if we see a stagnation in progress that does not have 
to do with the qualifications for the job, that is telling us 
there is a barrier that we as a society should want to remove. 
And whether it is voting rights, whether it is employment, 
whether it is education or public accommodations, every single 
time we say let us pay attention to the people who are 
excluded, a lot more people of every race, of every background, 
get more opportunity, and that is what we should all be for.
    Ms. Lee. We are going to leave it right there. That is my 
time. I yield back.
    Chairman Comer. The Chair recognizes Mr. Grothman from 
Wisconsin. Oh, I am sorry, Mr. Sessions from Texas.
    Mr. Sessions. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. The 
discussions have been very important today, and I think the 
issue is laid out where the American people know what they 
think is right and wrong. Discrimination, I think, defines 
itself in existence of law over and over and over. And it tries 
to give a balance, not just to the importance of it, but also 
about how it would be looked at by conduct, not just the law, 
but really how we ought to move as a society.
    Attorney General Rokita, you and I have intellectually 
disadvantaged, disabled children. We had to fight lots of 
battles and still do, but we ask for accommodation. I do not 
think we ask to overrule or move over. We ask for 
accommodation, the opportunity to participate. I note on page 
10 of your brief that you gave us, ``Indiana State Attorney 
General Advisory Opinion Concerning Use of Preferred Pronouns 
in the Workforce.'' This is very interesting because it goes 
well beyond something that I think someone could see on its 
surface, something that someone could easily understand.
    We can see color, we can see a sex, we can see things. We 
know discrimination when we see it, attitude and other things. 
I note in here that you find it is not against the law, and yet 
people are held accountable. There are Federal rulings on this 
by government, EEOC, perhaps most importantly. This disturbs 
me. Where is the line between discrimination defined in law and 
this overwhelming desire for people to push simple things like 
pronouns or competing against women?
    Mr. Rokita. Thank you, Congressman. I mean, that is exactly 
it. You have painted the picture correctly. Title VII was very 
clear in the words that it used, and Bostock has taken it a 
very tiny step further, still connecting it to the word found 
in Title VII, particularly the word ``sex.'' But what the EEOC 
does and the reason that the legislator who asked for this 
opinion wanted it, was to stop that creep, to stop that 
crawling by unelected bureaucrats.
    Mr. Sessions. I think we all need to know where the line 
is.
    Mr. Rokita. Right, and Title VII----
    Mr. Sessions. It would be inappropriate if I necessarily 
meaningfully discriminated against someone, but there are a lot 
of things we do not know about people that we cannot see, that 
we do not know.
    Mr. Rokita. Right, like whether it is our sons or in any 
context, and that is why the laws have to be clear. They have 
to be unambiguous. And that is why it is wrong for unelected 
bureaucrats to try to take those words, those laws that you are 
supposed to create and make their own interpretations of them, 
and then try to enforce them, which is exactly what is being 
done at the EEOC today, and why it is important to have 
opinions like the one we did in Indiana.
    Mr. Sessions. Ms. Stepman, I found your arguments most 
compelling because I believe that most Americans want to do the 
right thing, but they expect that the law will equally be 
balanced in that endeavor. And we tend to hear about how 
capitalism and corporations or businesses want all these 
things, but really what it gets down to is that I think we, 
deep down as Americans, want to be good to people. We really do 
not want to hold things against anybody, but we also recognize 
when that line is violated, when it did not work for me, or it 
did not work for a group of people. Tell me more about how we 
fix this. Is it done in state laws? Does it have to be done at 
a Federal law?
    Ms. Stepman. Well, Independent Woman's Voice has been quite 
active, and we have something where we basically are advancing 
a definition of ``sex,'' which we did not used to have to do, 
right? This was something that was common sense. Everybody 
understood what a woman was, what a man was, but now we find 
that it is necessary to actually define that in state law in 
order, for example, to protect sports opportunities for young 
women.
    Unfortunately, this Administration in 2021, for example, we 
had West Virginia pass exactly that kind of law, defining the 
word ``woman'' and only permitting females to participate in 
public youth sports, a very reasonable thing for a state to do. 
We actually had the Biden Administration come in--this is even 
before their regulatory drop of 1,500 pages, right--come in and 
say, no, we interpret Federal law, Title IX, to basically say, 
no, the state of West Virginia cannot define the word 
``woman.'' So, I do think, ultimately, something will have to 
be done on the Federal level.
    And the first thing that has to be done on the Federal 
level is for agencies to stop going beyond their mandates and 
doing and usurping the job that this body has, right? The so-
called Equality Act was put forward in this body multiple times 
to add gender identity to Title VII and to our civil rights law 
generally. That law did not pass. And so, what we have are a 
series of agencies, whether it is the Department of Education 
or the EEOC, putting out either guidance or regulation that 
does what they were not able to do politically, and I think 
they cannot do it politically because of exactly what you said. 
Americans do not believe that the reality of biological sex is 
bigotry.
    Chairman Comer. Thank you very much. The Chair recognizes 
Representative Tlaib from Michigan.
    Ms. Tlaib. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. I know just 
hearing all this, it just feels like colleagues just want to 
pretend that racism and discrimination actually even exist. I 
do not know how you address systemic, you know, inequity, 
different various policies and systems without actually, like, 
fully understanding the full scope of, again, the systems and 
how they were created and the history of how it was created and 
all of that. You know, I always say this to people. I am in an 
institution that was not really ready for someone like me, and 
it is very clear, you know, being one of the first Muslim women 
here.
    You know, CEO Wiley, like, one of the things that I am 
really taken aback, though, and have only seen this, you know, 
maybe in my lifetime. I know it happened before, but one of the 
things that I see in regard to trying to even deny Black 
history as American history is really incredibly, I do not 
know, painful that we will not even acknowledge that those 
systems and that form of oppression even existed. And I was 
looking up, it was like, what, 3,362 instances of certain books 
being banned. I mean, you know, everybody is always shocked, 
``Beloved'' by Toni Morrison, CEO Wiley, ``I Know Why the Caged 
Bird Sings'' by Maya Angelou, ``The Color Purple'' by Alice 
Walker. I mean, it just goes on and on. And so, I do not know, 
talk about, I think, the importance here of, you know, how we 
address systemic inequality without even acknowledging our 
history.
    Ms. Wiley. Well, thank you, Congresswoman, for that 
question because I think part of what it lays bare is the fact 
that we are seeing a very organized, highly financed, and 
concerted effort by some extremist ideologues to say we cannot 
learn about slavery and, in fact, we should go one step further 
in one instance, and we should say that there are some good 
things about slavery, require it in our curriculum, even though 
that is a lie. It is counter to history.
    Pan America has actually documented that roughly 80 percent 
of all banned book titles are written by or about people of 
color or LGBTQ people, so that is targeted. That is not 
general, and none of that has to do with age-appropriate 
learning. And some teachers have been fired for saying, no, but 
this is consistent with the curriculum I am being asked to 
deliver. The fact that we have seen a political attack on AP 
African American History, demanding that things that are 
historical facts be taken out of the curriculum, that is 
political. That is political. It should be nonpartisan.
    Ms. Tlaib. It is unbelievable to me that they just want to 
erase it or try to reinterpret it in 2024 and how that is 
actually the opposite. This is why, if anything, it proves we 
need some of these policies in place. I think policies are 
already in place. It has been embedded in place before I even 
got here.
    Ms. Wiley. I want to connect it to employment.
    Ms. Tlaib. Yes.
    Ms. Wiley. Let us connect it to employment because there is 
a recent viral video from a few days ago, a Black woman FedEx 
driver----
    Ms. Tlaib. That is right.
    Ms. Wiley [continuing]. Who then says she was told by her 
supervisor that there was a town she could not deliver in 
because it was like a sundown town it was so racist. She did 
not believe it. She had 2 hours off, and so she wanted to go to 
the Walmart that was in that town. It was 10 minutes away from 
her route. She drives over there. It is so hostile, she leaves. 
Her supervisor has to tell her, I told you so, you know.
    But here is the thing. So, we are making businesses now 
have to tell and assign drivers based on their race for their 
own safety around their routes, and this is in the Midwest. 
That is because we are not doing what even so many companies 
are now being threatened with for doing, which is saying how do 
we understand each other's experiences.
    Ms. Tlaib. I agree, CEO Wiley, and I will end, Chairman. 
But, you know, I grew up in Detroit, and we grew up with 
community mothers, not just your own biological mothers, and 
they said, oh, this is not the first time we had to pretend 
that it did not happen, we had to pretend. Oh, we could not 
live in those neighborhoods. It is like, move on. That is what 
they were forced to do as children, you know, just move on, 
stop talking about it, and I think that is incredibly dangerous 
because we end up repeating history. Thank you so much. I 
yield.
    Chairman Comer. The gentlelady yields. The Chair recognizes 
Ms. Mace from South Carolina.
    Ms. Mace. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Fourteenth Amendment 
of the Constitution and the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act 
of 1964 prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex. That has 
been the law of the land for decades. Unfortunately, Joe Biden 
is confused. Shocker. The Biden Administration and their 
``gender Taliban'' cannot even define what it means to be a 
woman. They are erasing what it means to be women and 
endangering women and girls in the process.
    The Biden Administration's Equal Employment Opportunity 
Commission in April of this year updated guidance on what 
constitutes sex-based discrimination. Under the Biden 
Administration's guidance, to use someone's biologically 
correct pronouns or their legal name, guess what? It is 
workplace discrimination. Acknowledging someone who identifies 
as a different gender without their permission, workplace 
discrimination. Insist that biological men use the bathroom or 
locker room designated for biological men and not terrorize 
women and girls in the girls' bathroom, workplace 
discrimination.
    Where did we lose our way? This is absurd. I tell my kids, 
you do not come home from school with pronouns, you come home 
with A's and B's. I do not want to know your pronouns. I do not 
care about your pronouns. That is not what we should be talking 
about in school. We should be talking about A's and B's, math, 
writing, and arithmetic. This guidance by the Biden 
Administration infringes on the First Amendment rights of 
American workers, threatens the safety of women and girls, and 
serves to further erase and erode what it means to be a woman, 
which leads me to my first question, Ms. Wiley. Can you define 
what a woman is?
    Ms. Wiley. A woman is a person who says she is. And let me 
just tell you one story about this because when I was a child--
--
    Ms. Mace. Oh no, you are not going to tell me a story. We 
are not doing that right now. It is not story time.
    Ms. Wiley. Yes, it is story time because when I was a 
child, I was called a boy.
    Ms. Mace. No, it is not. I am going to reclaim my time. Be 
quiet. I am going to reclaim my time right now. Biological 
women are real women. A guy born as a man who wants to pretend 
to be a woman and put him in his big gym and the twins in the 
locker room with underage girls, or his little gym and twins, 
by the way, is disgusting.
    I have a daughter. She turned 14 last year. I took her to a 
store called Aerie for her birthday. We went shopping for an 
hour in downtown Charleston, South Carolina. She was taken to 
her dressing room by a biological male in a mini-skirt and a 
lace bralette. It is disgusting. I have no idea if that man was 
over 18 or under 18. It is absolutely disgusting that we are 
redefining what women are and allowing men into women's private 
spaces.
    And by the way, Ms. Wiley, I am a survivor of rape. I was 
raped at the age of 16. I am not going to put other women and 
girls into unsafe situations where biological men with their 
willie-nillies out, putting women and girls at risk. It is 
absurd. It is disgusting. And I have 1 minute and 50 seconds 
left of my questioning. Do you believe, Ms. Wiley, that you 
need to have a Ph.D. in biology to know what a woman is? Yes or 
no. Yes or no to my question?
    Ms. Wiley. I first want to say you are right.
    Ms. Mace. I am running out of time.
    Ms. Wiley. I am so sorry, and you should never have to 
suffer from sexual violence.
    Ms. Mace. You did not do it. Do you need a Ph.D. in biology 
to know what a woman is? I have been rape shamed by the left, 
and I am not going to allow any of that stuff to happen today. 
Do you believe that you need a Ph.D. to define what a woman 
is--yes or no--is the question.
    Ms. Wiley. I think every woman is able to define herself as 
a woman.
    Ms. Mace. That is not how it works. There is biology and 
science. I would encourage every American to follow the 
science. Are there risks to women when biological men are in a 
bathroom with them, Ms. Wiley? Yes or no.
    Ms. Wiley. We have every reason to want everyone to be 
safe.
    Ms. Mace. She cannot even answer the question.
    Ms. Wiley. And we are not safe or unsafe----
    Ms. Mace. Everybody, listen to the left today. They cannot 
say ``yes'' or ``no'' when asking whether or not there are 
risks to women when biological men are in the bathroom, cannot 
even say ``yes'' or ``no'' in the hearing today. This is 
lunacy. This is absurd. This gender-bending ideology of the 
left is disgusting. It is absurd. It is absolute lunacy, and it 
is a mental health issue in our country. If you agree with this 
ideology of allowing men into women's spaces, you have a mental 
health problem in this country.
    I do not have to go on about the Planet Fitness in Alaska 
just a few weeks ago or months ago where this guy in his boxers 
is in the locker room shaving, and there is an underage girl in 
a towel in the locker room with him. This stuff is disgusting. 
And I am going to do everything in my power as a conservative 
woman in this country and Congress to protect all of our women 
and girls from this lunacy that is happening in the country 
today. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
    Chairman Comer. The gentlelady yields back. The Chair 
recognizes----
    Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Mr. Chair, I ask unanimous consent to 
enter into the record a new report from the Southern Poverty 
Law Center that describes how pseudoscience has become a tool 
to manipulate public opinion and advance legislation and legal 
actions targeting the LGBT community.
    Chairman Comer. Without objection, so ordered.
    The Chair now recognizes Mr. Grothman from Wisconsin.
    Mr. Grothman. I would like to thank you for having this 
hearing. I have a book that I am reading--hold on for 1 
second--called the ``America's Culture Revolution,'' in which 
they talk about this DEI obsession as being a successor to 
prior efforts of progressives or communists or what have you to 
divide America, and they fail to divide America by income 
level, so they are intentionally trying to divide America by 
race. The reason I believe that this is true is if you look at 
this time in our history, where people from all around the 
globe come and earn more than people of European descent. 
India, China, Cuba, Philippines, Iran, all these people come 
here, and within a generation, they are outliving people of 
European descent.
    We live at a time where single women under 30 out-earn 
single men under 30. But nevertheless, we set up this 
bureaucracy that says that if I am a person of color and I 
inherited $10 million, I am put upon and should be given 
preference over somebody who is of European descent who has 
virtually nothing. We have a bureaucracy in which if somebody 
comes here from Spain, they are considered an evil European and 
they have to be penalized, but if somebody comes from Spain, 
spends two generations in Cuba and then comes here, all of a 
sudden, they are a put-upon minority. The only way that makes 
any sense is if you intentionally want to divide America, and 
it is just so obviously offensive and it must be confronted 
wherever we go.
    I also want to point out the left is very good at using 
words to confuse people. Earlier today, we were accused of 
conservatives being for censorship. I think when you do not 
want to have first or second grade kids reading graphical 
sexual things, that is not what I consider censorship.
    But in any event, according to a recent study by 
Bloomberg--and this is for Jonathan Berry up there--a recent 
study by Bloomberg, when looking at 2020 and 2021 data for 88 
S&P 100 companies, it was found that 94 percent of new hires 
went to people of color or other minorities, only 12 percent 
European. This, in my opinion, could be the result of companies 
instituting race-based policies when it comes to hiring and 
recruitment. I hear that from all sorts of people in my 
district, by the way. There is no question. If you talk to 
human resource professionals and they can speak off the record, 
this is happening big time.
    Mr. Berry, can you discuss how this data might support 
findings of illegal corporate race-based policies that violate 
the law?
    Mr. Berry. Congressman, in the ordinary course, if you 
presented in court that kind of data where you have such a 
profound mismatch, presumably, between the demographics of who 
actually is hired and the relevant labor market, and then you 
couple that with the company's own explicit race-based policy, 
that is a layup. That is not a hard case. That is textbook 
racial discrimination under Title VII in many cases.
    Mr. Grothman. OK. I will give you another question along 
those lines. In President Biden's first year, approximately 
three percent of his judicial appointees were White 
heterosexual men, three percent in his first year in office. 
Could you comment on that? Would that be evidence of something 
going on here with the Biden Administration?
    Mr. Berry. It is, potentially. The standards that govern 
the President's appointments are, of course, different than 
private employment, but again, you need to look at the relevant 
labor market. I think it is something that would need a real 
look, yes.
    Mr. Grothman. Yes. I am just saying, when you have that 
degree. Could any one of you talk, and maybe this is not 
exactly on point, but what effect does this pound, pound, pound 
on some young people that America is a racist country have upon 
certain groups? I can certainly understand how it empowers 
politicians, right, but in the classroom when you are again and 
again told that, in essence, you are going to have a harder 
time succeeding. Obviously, people coming from other countries, 
India, China, Philippines, Iran, they do not have a hard 
problem succeeding, but on some groups may be counterproductive 
and be the reason why certain ethnic groups are not doing as 
well because they keep being told that they should not.
    Mr. Rokita. Congressman, good to see you again. I think you 
are exactly right. It is made to divide. It is made to make 
people feel inferior. There is no excuse for it anymore. We 
have been through it for so long now, other than, really, what 
you are talking about. It is intentional, and it is made to 
make us weaker instead of more unified, more patriotic.
    Mr. Grothman. OK. I will give you an anecdote and then I 
will let you comment on it. I was in a classroom, Zoom, and the 
teacher, a White teacher, told a mixed-race classroom that 
Black children made up a higher percentage of kids arrested in 
that school than their total number in the school, and then 
told the kids that this was evidence of racism. What effect do 
you think that would have on a little boy or girl in the class 
who was African American if their teacher is telling them how 
racist America is and how racist the police is? Do you think 
that has any effect on their ability to succeed in society? I 
mean, I can understand how when a politician says it, it makes 
the politician more likely to get elected, but could you 
comment on that?
    Mr. Berry. Congressman, just briefly I would say that a lot 
of education that focuses on critical race theory has the 
perverse effect of inculcating a victim mentality in a way that 
makes for all kinds of unhappy societal occurrences, exactly 
the kind you are talking about.
    Mr. Grothman. Thank you very much.
    Chairman Comer. The Chair recognizes Ms. Stansbury from New 
Mexico.
    Ms. Stansbury. All right. Well, thank you very much, Mr. 
Chairman. I want to just start by saying that this hearing is 
making America less safe for our children and LGBTQ and people 
of color across this country. There are over 14 million 
Americans in this country who currently self-identify as LGBTQ. 
Twenty percent of our young people who identify as queer have 
taken actions to harm themselves. Hearings like this, and I am 
sorry, witnesses like the ones that have been called here today 
who are spewing hateful rhetoric as are my colleagues across 
this dais today, are making this country unsafe for our 
children. They are making this country a less just place by 
perpetrating and repeating hateful speech.
    Now, we know here in the United States that nearly 45 
percent of Americans who identify as LGBTQ have experienced 
discrimination in the workplace, and about 20 percent actually 
report that they have faced physical harassment. Of the 
lawsuits that have been filed by the EEOC, 35 percent of them 
are based on sex, 34 percent are based on disability, and 17 
percent are based on race, and of the reported cases, over 40 
percent of Black Americans report that they experienced 
discrimination in the workplace. This is not some woke agenda. 
This, as Childish Gambino says, ``This is America.''
    So, why is the GOP sitting here spending Committee 
resources trying to tell us that this is just some made-up 
agenda? Why are they bringing folks here to perpetrate these 
lies and attacks on people that we know have faced systemic 
discrimination for generations here in this country? It is 
because it is being funded. It is being funded by donors, it is 
being funded by organizations that are trying to advance this 
agenda, and it is being funded and supported by candidates 
right here in this Congress as well as other institutions.
    Now, Mr. Berry, I appreciate that you have come before this 
Committee, but I want to ask you just a few quick ``yes'' or 
``no'' questions. Is it true that you clerked for Justice 
Alito? Yes or no.
    Mr. Berry. Yes.
    Ms. Stansbury. And you helped to draft Chapter 18 of the 
Project 2025 report, correct?
    Mr. Berry. I was the lead author, yes.
    Ms. Stansbury. You were the lead author. And your law firm, 
in fact, filed an amicus in the Students for Fair Admission 
case before the Supreme Court, correct?
    Mr. Berry. Correct.
    Ms. Stansbury. Thank you. That is right. So, one of our key 
witnesses that has been called here today--and, again, no 
disrespect--is part of a larger effort in front of the courts, 
in front of Congress, in front of state legislatures across the 
country to undermine and chip away at the rights of Americans, 
affirmative action, voting rights, LGBTQ rights, abortion 
rights, women's rights, fueling anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ 
legislation across the country, and making it less safe and 
less free for our children, for our families, and for all 
Americans.
    I represent the state of New Mexico, and I want to say that 
we have taken action. We have protected reproductive rights, we 
have protected gender-affirming care, and we have passed one of 
the most comprehensive voting rights pieces of legislation in 
the country. And I will not stand here and sit silent while I 
hear this kind of hate being spewed in this institution. We 
have to stop the hate. I yield back.
    Chairman Comer. The Chair recognizes Mr. Burchett from 
Tennessee.
    Mr. Burchett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I ask for unanimous 
consent to enter into the record the Bloomberg article titled, 
``Corporate America Promised to Hire a Lot More People of 
Color. It actually did.''
    Chairman Comer. Without objection, so ordered.
    Mr. Burchett. Thank you. Attorney General Rokita, following 
George Floyd's death, there were many companies that made 
promises to hire and promote more Black folks and others from 
underrepresented groups. Does that sound familiar?
    Mr. Rokita. Yes, Congressman.
    Mr. Burchett. Well, what do you think of those promises?
    Mr. Rokita. Well, you know, aspirations are one thing, and 
I could just tell you that in my own hiring practices, where I 
said during my testimony we have 400 people, we look for 
diversity. I want diversity of thought. It makes for better 
cases, it makes for better arguments, it makes for better 
attorneys, it makes for better office, but I am not going to do 
that by discriminating against another person. That is against 
the law, it is against Title VII, and it is short-sighted and 
ignorant.
    Mr. Burchett. I often say put the best player in, coach, 
and that is what we need. Bloomberg collected data from 2021 
for 88 Standard & Poor's 100 companies. In total, those 
companies increased their workforce by 323,094 people. Of the 
323,094 jobs, only 20,524 or 6 percent went to White workers. 
The other 94 percent went to the people of color. Mr. Berry, 
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination 
based on race, color, or national origin. Is that correct?
    Mr. Berry. That is correct.
    Mr. Burchett. Do you know what percentage of the U.S. is 
White, non-Hispanic?
    Mr. Berry. So, the statistic that has been discussed today 
is approximately 59 percent or 60 percent.
    Mr. Burchett. OK. I had 57, but I will go with that. How is 
it possible that these companies only hire six percent White 
folks without using discriminatory hiring practices?
    Mr. Berry. My rough-and-ready statistical analysis would be 
that it is extremely implausible that that would be done 
without intentional discrimination.
    Mr. Burchett. OK. Thank you. Ms. Wiley, in your written 
statement, you said that so-called war on woke is a danger to 
democracy and to all progress we have made as a society that 
has benefited us all. How does corporate America using 
discriminatory practices against White people benefit us all?
    Ms. Wiley. Discrimination does not benefit anyone, ever.
    Mr. Burchett. OK.
    Ms. Wiley. And the good news here is that is why 
corporations have been voluntarily taking steps to ensure that 
they are not discriminating, and that is what we want them to 
keep doing.
    Mr. Burchett. OK. Thank you. Yes or no, you also say 
attacks against woke radicals are based in a desire to keep us 
back to the 1950's when Black people were segregated. Is that--
--
    Ms. Wiley. Yes.
    Mr. Burchett. OK. Attorney General Rokita, as someone who 
fights against unequal and discriminatory workplace practices, 
do you believe the critics of the DEI movement are radicals 
that want to bring us back to the 50's, or are they just 
upholding Title VII of the Civil Rights Act?
    Mr. Rokita. Clearly, Congressman, they are upholding Title 
VII, they are upholding the rule of law, and they are keeping 
things fair for everyone.
    Mr. Burchett. What about you, Mr. Berry?
    Mr. Berry. Hundred percent. Nondiscrimination and 
colorblindness are baked into the statute, and that is exactly 
what we try to indicate.
    Mr. Burchett. OK. And so how should the EEOC combat these 
corporate DEI programs?
    Mr. Berry. The EEOC should apply the blackletter law and 
find that attempts to change the racial complexion by these 
racial balancing schemes are unlawful, as Title VII has always 
held.
    Mr. Burchett. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I yield the rest of 
my time to Representative Greene.
    Chairman Comer. Representative Greene?
    Ms. Greene. Thank you. Listening today to my colleagues on 
the other side of the aisle charging Republicans with racism, 
hate, saying that we discriminate against people from the LGBTQ 
community or based on race has been appalling today, and I am 
sorry for the witnesses that have had to hear that. I am sorry 
to the American people. That should not be happening. I do not 
think anyone stood in line to pick their race or chose if they 
wanted to be a man or a woman or what color hair, any kind of 
physical feature before they were born. That is not something 
that any of us picked.
    But I will say that America has gotten a lot of things 
right, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act has done an 
incredible job with the blackletter law, and it is being 
violated every single day. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the 
remainder of the time.
    Chairman Comer. The gentlelady yields back. The Chair now 
recognizes Ms. Norton Holmes from Washington, DC. Holmes 
Norton. I am sorry. I always get that wrong. Ms. Norton from 
D.C. I apologize.
    Ms. Norton. You can use either of my names. Thank you very 
much, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Wiley, I want to begin by thanking the 
Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights for its 
longtime support for statehood and home rule for the District 
of Columbia. The Leadership Conference has been indispensable 
in the fight to end the second-class treatment of the nearly 
700,000 D.C. residents by Congress.
    In 1977, I was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to be 
the first woman to chair the EEOC. As Chair, I issued the first 
Federal guidelines holding sexual harassment to be a violation 
of equal employment laws, which were later upheld by the 
Supreme Court. Despite progress in preventing employment 
discrimination, the work is not done. Ms. Wiley, what major 
gaps still remain to achieving equity for women, people of 
color, and other underrepresented groups in the workplace?
    Ms. Wiley. Oh, thank you, Congresswoman, and thank you for 
all you are doing to help get representation to all of us in 
Washington, DC. who deserve it. I will just say that as the 
EEOC guidance--and just to be very clear, it is guidance, it is 
not rulemaking, which means it is nonbinding--has been a real 
effort to try to direct attention to ways in which employers 
can and should look for ensuring more opportunity in employment 
for everyone and in compliance with Title VII.
    That is really important because I think the role of 
government both in helping to create guidance as well as being 
an enforcement mechanism for understanding and identifying when 
there have been violations is part of what we need. At the same 
time, you know, we need to make sure we are working together 
collectively to say let us be willing to collect data and 
understand and look at and find whether or not we have barriers 
to opportunities for equal employment for any group, because, 
by the way, one of the things that we have seen in Chapter 18 
that has been referenced here today is a proposal that says we 
should not know where and how we are doing when it comes to 
being more inclusive as a society.
    And if we are unwilling to look, if we are unwilling to 
actually confront whether or not we have created barriers, 
intentional or unintentional, what we are really saying is we 
are refusing to look at how we can move forward together. That 
is not going to help us fill the gaps and, I think, in addition 
to making sure that we are looking at the practical realities 
for every single American, and that is what we are talking 
about today.
    Ms. Norton. Well, Ms. Wiley, EEOC has been mandated since 
1964 to enforce Federal employment discrimination laws. Since 
1987, EEOC has issued policy guidance to employers, employees, 
practitioners, EEOC staff, and the courts, which, in EEOC's own 
words, serve as a resource for the public and the private 
sector on issues related to workplace harassment. This April, 
EEOC issued its most recent enforcement guidance on harassment 
in the workplace. So, Ms. Wiley, is this guidance creating new 
law, or is it viewed as an explanation and clarification of 
existing law?
    Ms. Wiley. It is an explanation, clarification. It is 
guidance. It is nonbinding. It is intended to be instructive.
    Ms. Norton. My Democratic colleagues and I will continue to 
stand up for Title VII and all American workers. I yield back 
the remaining time to the Ranking Member.
    Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much, Ms. Norton. Ms. Wiley, I 
seem to recall that there were a series of Federal Circuit 
Court decisions finding that Title VII protects transgender 
individuals against employment discrimination under the Civil 
Rights Act itself. Is that right?
    Ms. Wiley. That is correct, Congressman.
    Mr. Raskin. OK. And that is well accepted at this point, 
right?
    Ms. Wiley. It is, and, in fact, it is the Eleventh Circuit, 
which is a pretty conservative one, that has been protecting 
transgender rights, most recently, Tyler Copeland, who is a 
corrections officer, a trans man, who experienced incredible 
harassment that also endangered him as an employee.
    Mr. Raskin. And I am pleasantly surprised I have not heard 
any of the witnesses, anyone really, attacking the idea that 
there should be civil rights protection for transgender people 
in the workplace. Instead, they seem to be attacking these kind 
of bathroom hysteria stories. And I wonder to what extent 
bathrooms have played a role generally in opposition to civil 
rights laws, going all the way back to the interracial 
workforce.
    Ms. Wiley. Yes. I mean, one of the things that has been so 
sad about the discussion we have had today is that we have not 
recognized that we heard a lot of these same arguments when we 
were talking about integrating based on race. You know, every 
time we have advancements in society for protecting rights, 
there is often a lot of fear about what it means. And that is 
true of public accommodations law and saying that we should be 
able to have integrated restaurants and other public spaces. 
And that is something we overcame not because the American 
public and a majority of White people at the time supported it, 
but because it was the right thing to do under our 
Constitution.
    And what we have seen is that when we protect people's 
rights, and bathrooms are a great example. No, everyone should 
be safe in a bathroom. There are women who get raped by cis men 
who are in men's clothing in bathrooms. They should be safe 
from that just like transgender women should be safe from 
sexual violence. Everyone should be safe. And what we know is 
if you are a transgender woman forced to go into a men's 
bathroom, you are much less likely to be safe.
    And that is why we also have 200 organizations that have 
focused on sexual violence that have said what we have seen is 
more vulnerability for transgender people, that they have not 
seen any increase in sexual violence based on what is happening 
in bathrooms. And that is what we should be----
    Chairman Comer. The time has expired, almost 2 minutes 
over. The Chair now recognizes Ms. Greene for a full 5 minutes.
    Ms. Greene. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    [Chart.]
    Ms. Greene. For the people watching at home today, we are 
talking about Title VII of the Civil Rights Act that states, 
``It shall be unlawful employment practice for an employer to 
fail or refuse to hire, or to discharge any individual or 
otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect 
to his compensation terms, conditions, or privileges of 
employment because of such individual's race, color, religion, 
sex, or national origin.'' It carries on to talk about 
segregation and classification of employees or applicants, and 
it carries on to an individual's, again, race, color, religion, 
sex, or national origin.
    Yet today, and it was reported by CBS, it says that major 
U.S. companies gave 94 percent of new jobs to people of color 
in 2021. White workers accounted for 20,524 jobs, just 6 
percent. Mr. Rokita, would that be a violation of Title VII of 
the Civil Rights Act?
    Mr. Rokita. Yes, if the hiring was done simply on the basis 
of race. Correct.
    Ms. Greene. Mr. Berry?
    Mr. Berry. Yes, one hundred percent.
    Ms. Greene. Ms. Stepman?
    Ms. Stepman. As the AG said, when you find intentional 
statements to discriminate publicly, that is about a slam dunk 
a case under Title VII as you can get.
    Ms. Greene. Ms. Wiley?
    Ms. Wiley. You cannot discriminate based on race, period.
    [Chart.]
    Ms. Greene. OK. BlackRock Founder Scholarship has a program 
designated for undergraduate master's students who self-
identify as Black or African American, Hispanic, or Latino, 
Native American, LGBTQ, or disabled. Is this a violation of 
Title VII or a violation of the Civil Rights Act? Mr. Rokita?
    Mr. Rokita. Yes. I am having trouble reading all that, 
although I appreciate what you are doing. Self-identifying and 
then----
    Ms. Greene. Based on race----
    Mr. Rokita. Yes.
    Ms. Greene [continuing]. Identifying sex. Mr. Berry?
    Mr. Berry. Under Section 1981, that looks like a violation.
    Ms. Greene. Ms. Stepman?
    Ms. Stepman. Yes.
    Ms. Greene. Ms. Wiley?
    Ms. Wiley. We have had no ruling that I am aware of that 
says that is a violation.
    Ms. Greene. This is talking about race, gender, LGBTQ. 
Definitely it leaves off White. ``White'' is not on this list, 
so that would be based on race. That seems to be a violation to 
me.
    Ms. Wiley. I think what we are talking about is what the 
status of current case law is----
    Ms. Greene. Yes, I think definitely leaves off White 
people. I reclaim my time.
    [Chart.]
    Ms. Greene. ``Smithfield Foods has an aggressive set of 
goals in its hiring''--I know it is hard to see for the 
witnesses--``by 2030, increase the racial diversity of our 
leadership team by promoting and hiring qualified Black, 
Hispanic, and other underrepresented individuals to positions 
of supervisor and above in support of our current goal of 30 
percent representation.'' It goes on to talk about gender 
diversity in their leadership team for female leaders to 
positions of supervisor, talking about another current 
percentage goal. Mr. Rokita, would this be a violation?
    Mr. Rokita. Yes, because that is a quota.
    Ms. Greene. Mr. Berry?
    Mr. Berry. Absolutely.
    Ms. Greene. Ms. Stepman?
    Ms. Stepman. Quotas are a violation of----
    Ms. Greene. Ms. Wiley?
    Ms. Wiley. Goals are not quotas.
    Ms. Greene. They have quotas. They have percentage quotas, 
Ms. Wiley.
    Ms. Wiley. What I have heard is goals.
    Ms. Greene. I guess you have a hard time hearing the truth.
    [Chart.]
    Ms. Greene. Kellogg's. According to its filings with 
Securities and Exchange Commission, Kellogg's operates in a 
highly competitive commercial environment and faces significant 
challenges in finding capable employees, is what they claim. 
They have a program called Better Days Promise, specifies that 
by the end of 2025, it will achieve 25 percent racially 
underrepresented talent at the management level in the United 
States. It is talking about a paid postgraduate fellow program 
``for Black chefs to work with our research and development 
team to help them better understand food's roles in Black 
communities worldwide.'' Mr. Rokita, talking about race and 
having the woke percentage plans, is this a violation with 
Kellogg's?
    Mr. Rokita. Yes, assuming the hires are based solely on 
race, yes.
    Ms. Greene. Yes, they specifically say Black chefs here. 
Mr. Berry?
    Mr. Berry. Goals are usually quotas under the law.
    Ms. Greene. OK. Ms. Stepman?
    Ms. Stepman. Yes, it is a violation.
    Ms. Greene. Ms. Wiley?
    Ms. Wiley. We need to know a lot more facts before we know 
if that is the violation.
    Ms. Greene. They clearly state it right there, ``a paid 
postgraduate fellow program for Black chefs to work with our 
research and development team to help them better understand 
food's role for Black communities worldwide.'' Unlawfully, only 
Black or African-American chefs are allowed, even if 
individuals with other immutable characteristics who otherwise 
qualify, so they are leaving off the trans people. They are 
leaving off LGBTQ, Asian, Indian. Mr. Chairman, I have run out 
of time. Thank you very much.
    Chairman Comer. Thank you. The Chair now recognizes Ms. 
Pressley from Massachusetts.
    Ms. Pressley. Thank you to our witnesses for being here 
today. You know, although the subject matter of today's hearing 
is to be expected, certainly makes it no less offensive or 
frightening. My Republican colleagues very often like to quote 
Dr. King, I do not know, maybe for some civil rights 
credibility or to pervert his words to suit your extremist 
needs, while working actively to undermine his legislative 
legacy. Republican attacks on the EEOC are part of their 
broader efforts to weaken civil rights protections. One of 
their goals is plainly laid out in Project 2025, a thousand-
page bucket list of extremist policies. Mr. Berry, Chapter 18 
of the Project 2025 manifesto is about the Department of Labor, 
and you are the author of that chapter, correct?
    Mr. Berry. Lead author, yes. There are others, too.
    Ms. Pressley. Yes, you are. I believe the American public 
should know exactly how you and the Republican majority that 
invited you to testify today want to sabotage the EEOC, rewrite 
the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and push all of us back to an era 
of Jim Crow racism. I am shocked that my colleague across the 
aisle was in disbelief at our characterizations and assertions 
of racism and discrimination when even former House Speaker 
Kevin McCarthy said the Republican side of the aisle looked 
like the most restrictive country club in America. We all know 
that Make America Great Again is about making America White 
only again.
    The first page of Chapter 18 of Project 2025 complains 
about how the Biden Administration has been fighting for racial 
equity. On the next page, it calls for eliminating data 
collection on race and ethnicity in employment. On the page 
after that, it calls for rescinding an executive order signed 
in 1965 that prohibits discrimination in hiring by contractors. 
Mr. Berry, do these terrible ideas sound familiar?
    Mr. Berry. They are great ideas.
    Ms. Pressley. These terrible ideas sound familiar. Of 
course they do. You came up with them. Mr. Berry, I find it 
shameful to advance a vision attacking the very policies and 
agencies that have helped Black Americans secure jobs, earn a 
living, and provide for our families. This Project 2025 plan is 
policy violence, plain and simple. Its authors have placed such 
a large target on the EEOC because of the incredible work the 
EEOC is doing today. Last year alone, the Agency filed more 
than 27,000 charges of race-based discrimination. These workers 
and their families have a pathway to justice, accountability, 
and healing because of the policies and regulations that 
Project 2025 is trying to get rid of. Ms. Wiley, how would 
workers be harmed by Project 2025's commitment to undermining 
crucial protections that are enforced by EEOC and other Federal 
agencies?
    Ms. Wiley. Well, essentially, it guts the ability to both 
be able to have the rights and have enforcement and protection 
of the rights that we already have, and we have been seeing 
improvements and advancements when we have been enforcing them. 
And I am also deeply concerned with any suggestion that we 
should not be collecting data, or that labor rights, the rights 
to organize, which has been so important for workers across 
race, including White men, to ensure that they are getting fair 
wages and safe working conditions. All of these are actually in 
that chapter, and they threaten our workplaces for people who 
are White, for people of color, for people of all backgrounds 
in this country, and I think that is why we all need to be 
concerned because it really is about all of us.
    Ms. Pressley. That is right. They threaten our workplaces 
for every person who calls this country home. EEOC offers 
essential protections that create workplaces where all of us 
can thrive. But Project 2025 aspires to be the realization of a 
decades-long crusade by Republicans to strip away this key 
pillar of the Civil Rights Act. As a founding member of the 
Stop Project 2025 Task Force, I look forward to showing and 
telling the American people exactly who you are, Mr. Berry, 
along with your extremist friends. I urge my colleagues to join 
me in building the inclusive world we know to be possible, one 
in which everyone--is there something funny?
    Mr. Berry. No.
    Ms. Pressley. I did not think so. Nothing funny about this. 
And in honor of my departed mother and for my 15-year-old 
daughter, I will do everything possible to stop you from 
building the world that you are hell bent on doing. I urge my 
colleagues to join me in building the inclusive world we know 
to be possible, one in which everyone can show up to work free 
from discrimination. Thank you. I yield back.
    Chairman Comer. The Chair recognizes Mr. Gosar from 
Arizona.
    Mr. Gosar. The U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission 
has decided on April 29, 2024, that its new sexual harassment 
guidance, that most businesses with 15 or more employees must 
allow men in women's bathrooms or be in violation of Title VII 
of the Civil Rights Act. Attorney General Rokita, sir, good to 
see you again.
    Mr. Rokita. You, too.
    Mr. Gosar. What punishment would be meted out to a business 
that does not allow men into women's bathrooms?
    Mr. Rokita. Under that guidance?
    Mr. Gosar. Yes.
    Mr. Rokita. Well--it could range. First of all, there is 
the embarrassment factor of going through the process. There is 
the financial cost of going through the process if the EEOC was 
to bring charges, and, you know, depending on the 
circumstances, there could be fines.
    Mr. Gosar. Now, would the same punishment apply to a 
business if a business refused to force its employees to use 
pronouns they are not comfortable with?
    Mr. Rokita. Well, what we have said in the opinion in 
Indiana is that there is no Federal or state law that has this 
requirement. So, what you question goes to is how far these 
unelected bureaucrats are going to go to try to use the law, 
and the wedge they are putting into it, and the liberties they 
are taking with it to inflict harm and confusion on the 
business community.
    Mr. Gosar. Will single-sex spaces and businesses with 
employees of 15 or more exist if the sexual harassment guidance 
stays in place? Will they exist?
    Mr. Rokita. I am having trouble following that one. So, if 
you could----
    Mr. Gosar. It will be very hard, would it not, to be in 
compliance?
    Mr. Rokita. Yes. Right.
    Mr. Gosar. OK. Mr. Berry, this EEO-1 data, can you give me 
a little bit more information on how this data could be 
utilized or address our concerns it is in violation of the law?
    Mr. Berry. So, the EEO-1 collection requires employers to 
classify their employees on the basis of race, put people in 
these identity politics categories. The issue here is that 
unless there is particularized evidence of suspicion of 
discrimination, the EEO-1 aggravates, raises unnecessarily the 
salience of race, and this is in direct contravention to what 
the first Justice Harlan said. In Plessy v. Ferguson--his 
dissent vindicated in Brown v. Board of Education--Justice 
Harlan said we should not permit any public authority to know 
the race of any American citizen, that colorblindness is 
exactly what our Constitution requires, and that is indeed the 
value we ought to be upholding.
    Mr. Gosar. Is that not the whole premise of the Lady 
Justice? She is blindfolded. She holds a set of scales and a 
sword. Is that not the same kind of principle?
    Mr. Berry. Exactly. No respecter of persons.
    Mr. Gosar. Well, you know, pretty interesting. Now, the 
Supreme Court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County that a male 
employee cannot be fired just because he thinks he is a woman. 
That is an egregious decision on his face. However, you mention 
in your testimony, Ms. Stepman, that the Court did not, and 
this is the words of the Court ``purport to address bathrooms, 
locker rooms, or anything else of that kind.'' Is the EEOC 
directly violating the Supreme Court?
    Ms. Stepman. It is going much further than Bostock does, 
and it is violating the plain text meaning of Title VII.
    Mr. Gosar. And so really it is a promotion by a bureaucracy 
out of control?
    Ms. Stepman. Exactly. So, this did not even go through the 
APA rulemaking process.
    Mr. Gosar. So, when Kim Gardner refused to grant marriage 
licenses to gay couples, she was jailed. Earlier this year, she 
was just ordered to pay a gay couple that she would not pretend 
to marry for $260,000. Why am I not holding my breath that the 
EEOC officials will be held in the same account as Kim Gardner?
    Ms. Stepman. I am sorry. I am partially deaf, so it is 
difficult for me to understand. Sorry. I could not----
    Mr. Gosar. I will try it one more time. When Kim Gardner 
refused to grant marriage licenses to a gay couple, she was 
jailed. Earlier this year, she was just ordered to pay a gay 
couple she would not pretend to marry for $260,000. Why am I 
not holding my breath that the EEOC officials will be held to 
the same account as Ms. Gardner?
    Ms. Stepman. Yes, I am not holding my breath either, but 
they are equally beyond their mandate. They are operating as 
unelected officials. Remember, they do not have to stand before 
the American people. Again, this body, if it wanted to, could 
add gender identity to Title VII. It declined to do so, and now 
bureaucrats who are unelected are taking that power for 
themselves.
    Mr. Gosar. I thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, I yield 
back.
    Chairman Comer. The gentleman yields back. The Chair 
recognizes Mr. Raskin from Maryland.
    Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Back to you, Ms. 
Wiley. Title VII has been a great American success story and 
the model for civil rights law and jurisprudence all over the 
world. And the vast majority of Americans support Title VII, 
which really embodies the promise of civil rights and people 
being treated as individuals so that they can actually succeed 
upon their own merits. And yet Title VII has been opposed from 
the very beginning, has it not, and it has been resisted at 
every turn. I think that the ideological forebears of Mr. 
Rokita and Mr. Berry and Ms. Stepman, like Robert Bork, were 
arguing against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, saying that it 
was a violation of freedom of association. And I remember, you 
know, Anita Bryant and other anti-feminist activists arguing 
that women were not looking for equality and equal rights. 
Women were looking for a separate place and their special place 
under religious and cultural heritage. So, I just wonder if you 
would say a word about how this current attack on the Civil 
Rights Act and Title VII fits in with that history.
    Ms. Wiley. Yes, Congressman, there is an unbroken 
ideological line. In fact, this Committee hearing, I think, was 
noticed the day after Juneteenth, when we recognized the last 
state, in Galveston, Texas, where Black people were informed 
they were free after the Civil War. And the Civil War 
amendments themselves, the Fourteenth Amendment, which was the 
underpinning of Title VII, explicitly and after the Civil War, 
rejected colorblindness, in fact, in the forming of the 
amendment because it was understood that after slavery, there 
had to be the ability to actually create more opportunities for 
people who are Black. And in fact, the laws passed, like the 
Freedmen's Bureau, were specific about finding ways to focus on 
creating more opportunity.
    When we got to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, again, the 
longest filibuster in the history of the country, 60 full days 
before, fortunately, 73 senators, bipartisan, passed the Civil 
Rights Act, which includes Title VII, as well as Title VI, as 
well as Title II. But we never saw 1 day end in the argument 
that said it was somehow going to be unfair to White people if 
we were paying attention to racial discrimination. And frankly, 
it has just never been true that we have not paid attention to 
racial discrimination for all people. And anybody who is White 
can file an EEO complaint charge right now if they are being 
discriminated against based on their race, and the EEOC will 
investigate it.
    So, the whole fact that we are talking about Title VII as 
if there is a refusal to pay attention to discrimination, or 
the whole fact that we are suggesting that if Black people or 
Latinos or Native Americans are getting jobs, they must not be 
qualified for them, that in and of itself speaks to the same 
arguments we heard in opposition, whether it was post-Civil War 
or post-1964 or now, 2024.
    Mr. Raskin. And Mr. Berry was engaged in a colloquy with 
Representative Gosar about colorblindness, which they anchored 
in the principle of Lady Justice being blindfolded. And it made 
me wonder about to what extent you think there will be 
objective, neutral, dispassionate interpretation of the Civil 
Rights Act of 1964, of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by Justice 
Alito, Mr. Berry's former boss, whose home displayed the pro-
January 6th insurrectionist upside-down American flag and who 
displayed other flags in opposition to the American flag, 
essentially. Do you have a lot of confidence that Lady Justice 
is blindfolded when it comes to Justice Alito?
    Ms. Wiley. I do not.
    Mr. Raskin. And finally, just back on the transgender 
point, there seemed to be some suggestion from our colleagues 
that transgender individuals pose the threat of rape to 
American women. Are most American women who are raped, raped by 
heterosexual cis men or by heterosexual transgender men?
    Ms. Wiley. Well, I will say that what I have seen, which is 
the letter in support of transgender people being able to 
utilize the bathroom that matches their identity from sexual 
violence providers, rape crisis counselors is it is transgender 
people who are often disproportionately victims of sexual 
violence, and that they have not seen any increase in sexual 
violence because of protecting the rights of transgender 
people.
    Mr. Raskin. And I appreciate that. I am out of time, but I 
will say, without fear of being contradicted, that the 
overwhelming majority, if not all, of the rapes in America are 
conducted by men who are heterosexual cis men. And this other 
thing is a complete paranoid conspiracy theory, mythology meant 
to undermine the progress of civil rights law. I yield back.
    Chairman Comer. The Chair recognizes Mr. Khanna from 
California.
    Mr. Khanna. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Berry, you are the 
co-author----
    Chairman Comer. OK. Go ahead, Mr. Khanna. I am sorry, Mr. 
Khanna.
    Mr. Khanna. Mr. Berry, you are the co-author of Project 
2025, the labor section. Am I correct?
    Mr. Berry. The lead author on that section, correct.
    Mr. Khanna. I want to get some facts out. There has been so 
much conversation about working families and what we are going 
to do for the working class. I just want to get some facts out. 
In that report, you call for the repeal of Davis-Bacon and say 
that Congress should enact a law that makes it illegal to pay 
prevailing wage for union employees. Is that correct?
    Mr. Berry. I appreciate the chance to correct the record. 
That is actually not correct. The chapter expresses no view. 
There is an alternative view not attributable----
    Mr. Khanna. So, you do not think there should be a repeal 
of Davis-Bacon?
    Mr. Berry. The chapter does not take a position----
    Mr. Khanna. Do you have a view of whether there should be a 
repeal?
    Mr. Berry. Honestly, I think it is complicated, and I do 
not really know.
    Mr. Khanna. OK. In the chapter it says that you should end 
project labor agreements and project labor requirements. Is 
that correct?
    Mr. Berry. Same issue, Congressman.
    Mr. Khanna. You do not agree with that, or you say that the 
report does not call for that?
    Mr. Berry. The chapter does not speak to the issue 
directly. There is a dissent that does. I do not take a 
position.
    Mr. Khanna. What about the rescinding of regulations 
prohibiting the discrimination on the basis of sexual 
orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex 
characteristics? Do you believe that we should be repealing any 
regulations to prevent discrimination on that?
    Mr. Berry. I am blanking on exactly which regs we are 
talking about, but yes, I support what is in there on those 
issues. Yes.
    Mr. Khanna. So, just to be clear, you would repeal any 
regulations that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual 
orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics?
    Mr. Berry. The position is that Bostock should be read 
properly narrowly and not extended to the biological areas like 
bathrooms that we have been discussing today.
    Mr. Khanna. But that is not what the report says. The 
report says, basically, you do not want any regulations that 
prevent discrimination against gay people and people based on 
sexual orientation or gender identity. I mean, that is what you 
call for in the report.
    Mr. Berry. No, the chapter accepts Bostock according to its 
terms but resist its extension to areas it does not apply.
    Mr. Khanna. I mean, I am just quoting directly. It says 
``rescind regulations prohibiting discrimination on the basis 
of sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex 
characteristics.'' I mean, do you stand by that statement?
    Mr. Berry. I stand by what it says in the chapter, yes.
    Mr. Khanna. So, just to be clear, I mean, that basically 
means you do not believe that we need to have laws to protect 
people from discrimination. If someone is gay or someone is 
transgender, you think that there should not be laws to protect 
them. Let me go on to one other issue in this report. You say 
that we need to be scheduling civil employees as F scheduled 
employees, which means that the President would have the 
authority to fire about 50,000 civilian employees if she or he 
wants to. Is that correct?
    Mr. Berry. Someone else had responsibility. I do support 
that as a policy matter that, ultimately, the President and 
people accountable to the President should be the ones setting 
our executive branch policy.
    Mr. Khanna. So, I mean, under this scenario, for example, 
if President Trump returns to office, he would be able to fire 
about 50,000 people who are currently civil servants and bring 
in people who are more consistent with his ideology, and you 
are recommending this as a policy, correct?
    Mr. Berry. Having more political accountability is a very 
good thing.
    Mr. Khanna. I just want to know. I am not trying to argue. 
I am saying for a fact. So, you support the idea that Donald 
Trump could come in, hypothetically, if he wins the election, 
fire 50,000 civil employees and replace them with people who 
support his ideology?
    Mr. Berry. I support the Schedule F idea, yes.
    Mr. Khanna. And that means that if he wants to take civil 
servants from the Justice Department, State Department, and 
from the Department of Homeland Security, and he says they are 
not sufficiently for MAGA, I want to fire these folks, 50,000 
of them, and replace them with people more aligned the MAGA, he 
would have the ability to do that. Currently, there are only 
4,000 political appointees. You want him to have the authority 
if he wins the election to have 50,000 people replaced, 
correct?
    Mr. Berry. It is a lesser civil service regime. It is not 
the same as political appointees, but policy responsiveness is 
appropriate when it comes to any employee who touches on public 
policy, which----
    Mr. Khanna. But I am----
    Mr. Berry [continuing]. Would.
    Mr. Khanna. I am directionally correct. I mean, I think the 
American people should decide whether they want that or not. 
You are basically saying he should have the ability to fire up 
to 50,000 people if they are not doing what his ideology is and 
replace them with people more consistent with his ideology and 
reclassify these folks as Schedule F, correct?
    Mr. Berry. Hundred percent.
    Mr. Khanna. Thank you.
    Chairman Comer. The gentleman yields back. I would like to 
go to Mr. Mfume, but they tell me I have to call on Mr. Goldman 
next, so the Chair recognizes Mr. Goldman for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Goldman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It has been 
interesting listening to my colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle use phrases such as ``follow the science'' and 
blackletter law. Since science overwhelmingly has established 
that climate change is real and caused by human beings, 
especially oil and gas companies, I am sure they will agree 
that if we are to follow the science, then we should stop 
denying climate change. Mr. Berry, do you agree with the 
Supreme Court's rationale and analysis in the Bruen decision?
    Mr. Berry. So, I am not deeply familiar with it, but 
directionally what I understand, it seems to construe the 
Second Amendment as a robust individual right.
    Mr. Goldman. And would you consider it to be a strict 
constructionist interpretation of the Second Amendment?
    Mr. Berry. My impression is that it attempts to be a 
faithful exploration of the original public meaning of the 
Second Amendment.
    Mr. Goldman. The original public meaning, OK. Just so 
everyone is aware, the Bruen decision interpreted the Second 
Amendment to only allow for gun regulation that could have 
existed in 1789 when the Second Amendment was ratified. And of 
course there were no machine guns, there were no bump stocks, 
you know, the list goes on as to many, many technological 
advances that did not exist then, but it is the original 
meaning. Ms. Wiley, if we are going to talk about the original 
meaning of the actual blackletter law, was there any evidence 
in 1964 of pervasive discrimination against White people?
    Ms. Wiley. No.
    Mr. Goldman. So, it is fair to say this Title VII was, of 
course, not written to right the wrongs of discrimination 
against White people in 1964?
    Ms. Wiley. That is correct.
    Mr. Goldman. So, if one were to use the original meaning at 
the time that something was ratified or enacted, then 
discrimination against Whites would not be included as a 
cognizable claim under Title VII. Is that right?
    Ms. Wiley. No, because it is true that Title VII prevents 
all forms of racial discrimination. The reality of why the law 
was drafted and passed in the first place was because there 
were no protections that recognized that Black people, that 
Native Americans, that Pacific Islanders, that other people of 
color who were not being protected by government from 
discrimination deserve to be protected by government from 
discrimination, because what was happening for a hundred years 
after the winning of a Civil War to create true, equal 
opportunity is that it was formally and constantly denying 
people because they were not White.
    Mr. Goldman. I agree with you.
    Ms. Wiley. So, it did not make it OK to discriminate 
against White people. It just made it clear you cannot allow it 
against everyone else.
    Mr. Goldman. I am making somewhat of a rhetorical point 
because I do agree with you that we should not have 
discrimination based on race. I just want to point out the 
hypocrisy and the convenience that folks on the other side of 
the aisle like to use in a cynical way, blackletter law and the 
original meaning of things when it is convenient, but not when 
it is not convenient.
    The fact of the matter is that 82 percent of business 
leaders consider diversity initiatives to be essential to their 
business strategy. Two percent of business leaders say that 
these initiatives are not important. Diversity initiatives are 
credited with improving business performance, enhancing talent 
acquisition and retention, enhancing competitiveness, and 
fostering innovation. And 45 percent of business leaders said 
that the main reason they have diversity initiatives is to 
improve business performance. This is motivated by businesses, 
and it is demanded by consumers, just like ESD. And so, if 
Republicans profess to be the party of deregulation and free 
markets, why will you not just let the market decide whether 
diversity and inclusion or ESD is something that the market 
wants? Why do you now want regulation?
    The fact of the matter is you want regulation because you 
want to go back to the White replacement theory and a time 
when, in 1964, we needed to pass a law to protect 
discrimination against people of color and underserved and 
marginalized groups, not against White people. And it is a 
shame that this entire Project 2025 includes attacks on 
immigrants and the expulsion of immigrants and the exclusion of 
immigrants who make up so much of our economy and are essential 
to so many aspects, both from agricultural workers to highly 
skilled workers with H-1B visas. And so, I wish that we would 
have some consistency from the other side of the aisle in how 
we view diversity, as we approach with Project 2025, with 
immigration and with our employment laws, and I yield back.
    Chairman Comer. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Mfume from 
Maryland.
    Mr. Mfume. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to 
thank the witnesses that have been through a rather long day 
here with many of us on this Committee and certainly many of 
you. I am, Mr. Chairman, a bit perplexed. I have listened early 
on to the opening statements, and I am trying to find a 
connection back to what the original sin was, how we got to 
where we are, what caused it, what brought it about, and I have 
heard talk of bathroom sharing and the showing of genitals and 
a disputed definition of Title VII. Title VII is what it is, 
what it is, what it is, and as we heard earlier, its birth came 
out of the Civil Rights Act. That is how it was conceived.
    So, I think it is important for the Committee to understand 
that too often we hold fast to the conclusions of others. We 
tend to subject all facts to a prefabricated set of 
interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the 
discomfort of thought, but we stay away in this hearing at 
least from the original sin, and I do not know how that is 
possible considering how we got to where we are. And for a race 
of people who have suffered, endured, and survived a hundred 
years of Jim Crow, 200 years of slavery, oppression, 
deprivation, degradation, denial, and disprivilege, that is the 
original sin. And in an era of smaller vision, rapid apathy, 
and celebrated mediocrity, we do need people who will stand up 
and speak out for that and fight back against that which is 
wrong.
    It is just amazing how we have distorted how we got to 
where we are because we did not just fall out of the heavens 
this way. You know, the American birth, the American 
conception, was a conception that brought with it a number of 
things: the slaughter of Native Americans, the enslavement of 
what was then the Negro, and the annexation of the Hispanic. We 
have got a lot to bear in terms of the original sin. So, as we 
seek to correct it today, it is funny that the wolf has put on 
sheep's clothing and has come to tell us that we are all wrong.
    One thing is for sure. We are not going back to the way it 
was, not ever, ever again, and I want to commend Ms. Wiley, the 
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. You know, in my decade 
as president of the National NAACP, I had an opportunity to 
work with many of your predecessors. I have seen this fight go 
on for a long, long time, and I recognize that you have had the 
least amount of time today because you are one person versus 
three others who have had an opportunity to be called on a 
number of times. So, Mr. Chairman, I am going to relinquish my 
remaining time to Ms. Wiley. She may have some closing 
comments, questions, or suggestions for this Committee. Thank 
you very much.
    Ms. Wiley. Thank you, Congressman Mfume, for all your years 
of leadership and commitment to civil rights. I want to bring 
something into the room that is a direct example of why this is 
an ideological attack because we are seeing, as a result of a 
Supreme Court opinion on admissions in higher education, a 
lawsuit in San Francisco against a city program that is trying 
to ensure that Black babies and Pacific Islander babies live 
beyond the first year of life because the infant mortality rate 
for them are 11 and 13 percent higher than they are for White 
babies, and we do not want any baby to die before the age of 1. 
We want everyone of all races to be able to make it to maturity 
and make their own decisions and live their own lives.
    And yet we are seeing a legal attack based on the Civil War 
amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, because of a higher 
education admissions case that is now weaponized against trying 
to ensure survival of babies that is not about higher education 
admissions, and yet that is how we are seeing the opinion being 
weaponized. In the same way we have heard complaints about the 
EEOC taking a logical extension of a Supreme Court case, we are 
not hearing that on the other side about how a diversity case 
on higher education is being weaponized against rights.
    Mr. Mfume. Thank you and thank you for your work in this 
area over many, many years. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Chairman Comer. The gentleman yields back. Without 
objection, Representative Balint from Vermont is waived on to 
the Committee for the purpose of questioning the witnesses at 
today's hearing.
    Without objection, so ordered.
    The Chair now recognizes Representative Balint from 
Vermont.
    Ms. Balint. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to bring us 
back to the reasons that the protections enshrined in Title VII 
of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were needed then and are 
actually still very much needed today. My community, the LGBTQ 
community, is constantly under attack in this Congress. 
According to the Williams Institute, nearly half of LGBTQ+ 
workers have experienced unfair treatment at work, and LGBTQ 
employees of color are more likely to report being denied jobs 
and experiencing verbal harassment.
    There are endless stories that I could convey in this 
hearing. I will just cite a few. I am thinking of one American 
who faced horrific workplace discrimination. She described how 
her co-worker said that ``transgender people were mentally ill, 
and the cure was a bullet between the eyes.'' Another 
American--and I stress that these are Americans who are just 
trying to live their lives and work in peace--another American 
faced workplace violence and discrimination when one of her co-
workers became physically aggressive with her while calling her 
transphobic slurs, again, while just trying to do her job and 
live her life. There are so many gut-wrenching stories, and 
they are an indication of the damage that fearful, hateful, and 
dehumanizing rhetoric has had on Americans who just want to 
live their lives. Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity 
and respect in the workplace, and these Title VII protections 
help us ensure that they are protected. This is about basic 
humanity. I cannot tell you how many times I have to say this 
in this Congress. It is about basic humanity, people being able 
to live their lives and work in peace.
    In the Supreme Court's Bostock decision, our Nation's 
highest Court affirmed that Title VII protects against 
discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. 
But we need explicit protections because so many will still 
seek to demonize and dehumanize us, and I say ``us'' as I am 
part of that community. We have to pass the Equality Act to 
explicitly protect LGBTQ people against discrimination, whether 
it is in employment, housing, public accommodations, federally 
funded programs, education, jury selection, credit, I can go on 
and on and on, people just trying to live their lives as 
Americans. To the members of my community across this country, 
I want you to know that you are entitled to dignity and respect 
at work. You are entitled to dignity and respect everywhere 
because you are an American and you are entitled to those 
things.
    Although there are many people in Congress who push 
discriminatory bills and hateful amendments and fearmongering 
rhetoric every single day that I am in the Capitol, there are 
also good people in Congress who are standing up to this 
hateful rhetoric, and I am one of them. I am one of these 
people who, every single day, I have to come here and do battle 
with this. I will not allow our voices to be silenced. I will 
not allow these attacks to go on unchallenged and to have our 
rights as Americans taken away. We are going to continue to 
fight alongside all of our strong allies in Congress because we 
have many. And I want to specifically say to trans people 
across this country, I see you. I am here to support you. I 
want you to live freely and authentically without fear of 
violence or discrimination.
    Ms. Wiley, in the minute that I have left, what would it 
mean for trans people if Republicans' interpretation of Title 
VII were to prevail, and that gender identity was no longer 
protected by Title VII?
    Ms. Wiley. It would mean not only the loss of dignity, not 
only the loss of jobs, not only the loss of the ability to 
really be able to ensure that you can take care of yourself and 
your family fairly and with equal opportunity to work, it would 
increase danger and physical safety. We saw that in the 
Eleventh Circuit case with Tyler Copeland, a transgender man, 
endangered because his own supervisees were harassing and 
abusing him because he was transgender in front of inmates. 
That is actually an unsafe condition, and the same in terms of 
sexual violence, murder. You know, we are essentially giving 
permission to hate bias and violence, and we should not 
tolerate it, and we stand with you.
    Ms. Balint. Thank you, Ms. Wiley. In closing--I know I am 
over, Mr. Chair--I just want to say there are a few, I believe, 
true believers whose spew these hateful indignities toward 
people in my community, and there are a lot of enablers who go 
along to get along, and what they are doing is demonizing and 
dehumanizing their fellow Americans. I yield back.
    Chairman Comer. The gentlelady's time expired. In closing, 
I want to thank our witnesses for being here----
    Mr. Mfume. Mr. Chairman? Mr. Chairman, I am sorry.
    Chairman Comer. Yes. Yes.
    Mr. Mfume. I have a unanimous----
    Chairman Comer. Absolutely, of course.
    Mr. Mfume [continuing]. Consent request for three articles 
to be entered into today's record. The first is from the New 
York Times, entitled, ``No Vacancies for Blacks: How Donald 
Trump Got His Start and Was First Accused of Bias.'' The second 
article is from NBC News, entitled, ``Not Wanted: Black 
Applicants Rejected for Trump Housing Finally Speak Out.'' And 
the third is an article from Politico, entitled, ``Trump Moves 
to Gut Obama Housing Discrimination Rules.''
    Chairman Comer. Without objection, so ordered.
    Are there any other UCs that anyone wants to submit?
    [No response.]
    Seeing none and in closing, I want to thank our witnesses 
for being here today. Obviously, this is an enormous issue. 
This is an issue that is going to have to be addressed by 
Congress, very differing opinions on this issue. We have heard 
from many in the private sector, many Americans that feel 
discriminated against by the DEI policies. Thankfully, the 
Civil Rights Act protects against discrimination, but many of 
us believe this DEI has taken discrimination to another level, 
and we continue to want to work with you all to try to come up 
with a resolution to the problem that is affecting a majority 
of Americans.
    So, with that and without objection, all members have 5 
legislative days within which to submit materials and 
additional written questions for the witnesses, which will be 
forwarded to the witnesses.
    If there is no further business, without objection, the 
Committee stands adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 2:38 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]