Given all of the bluster coming out of the Trump administration these days, one may find it difficult to keep track of the MAGA movement’s racist war on diversity in both the public and private sector.
As the United States’ president and his administration peddle terms such as “illegal DEI” to give diversity efforts an air of depravity, and amid stories of some well-known companies publicly rolling back some diversity efforts, one could be forgiven for thinking DEI is as “dead” as many conservatives claim. And yet, evidence suggests otherwise.
Last week offered a perfect example of the mixed bag I’m talking about. On Thursday, a federal judge dismissed the state of Missouri’s lawsuit against Starbucks over the coffee company’s diversity programs. Missouri’s right-wing former Attorney General Andrew Bailey, whom Trump tapped as deputy FBI director, launched the suit last year and it was taken over by his successor, Catherine Hanaway. The state basically accused Starbucks of discriminating against white men to favor other groups. But the suit was dismissed by a judge who said he couldn’t find a single Missouri resident harmed by Starbucks’ diversity initiatives.
One day later, a separate federal court ruling lifted an injunction that had been placed on two executive orders Trump signed last year banning federal agencies and contractors from running what he called “illegal DEI” programs. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals basically found that the plaintiffs — which included Baltimore’s mayor and city council — couldn’t block the executive order on its face but could sue over financial injuries or civil rights violations incurred as a result of it.
And notably, the chief judge in that case said the Trump administration acknowledged that DEI programs are not, in and of themselves, illegal.
“Defendants represented at oral argument that there is ‘absolutely’ DEI activity that falls comfortably within the confines of the law,” Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Albert Diaz wrote in his concurring opinion on last Friday’s ruling. The MAGA movement is absolutely applying pressure to quash diversity programs. But thus far, these programs are still being upheld in courtrooms and corporate America — and to a degree that makes any claims about their death premature, at best. Even some right-wingers have begun to kvetch over this reality. Relatedly, over the past year, I’ve been following along with reporter Nancy Levine Stearns’ reporting on the civil rights-focused website “Impactivize,” where she’s been hosting a running tally of major corporations whose shareholders have voted against anti-DEI proposals — overwhelmingly in nearly every case. Trump unleashed a public outburst over Apple’s shareholders voting in favor of the company’s DEI policies last year, and one could argue the tantrum was instructional in that it showed an awareness that his war on diversity has limitations. Corporations, and the broader American public, would do well to keep this in mind.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog. 
