It’s onerous to imagine that it’s been greater than 200 days since President Donald Trump took workplace for the second time. It seems like about 200 years. However nevertheless you measure time, the Equal Employment Alternative Fee would really like you to comprehend it has been busy these final 200 journeys ’around the solar. Busy with what, you say? Defending non secular freedom within the office, in fact. Effectively, a really slim view of non secular freedom.
The EEOC’s press launch touting its “200 Days of EEOC Action to Protect Religious Freedom at Work” is a laughably skinny little factor, even apart from the nonsense of its content material. It’s bought to be onerous nowadays for businesses to fake like they’re doing precise work and to record achievements.
Since Trump and his appointees have centered the entire of presidency on terrorizing individuals conservatives don’t like, glowing mid-year studies will be kinda onerous to return by. So the EEOC landed on the one factor this administration might genuinely say was persistently being addressed: the significance of letting conservative anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists do no matter they need so long as they are saying it’s non secular.
EEOC Performing Chair Andrea Lucas
Sure, the lead—and lengthiest—part on this factor is all about vaccine mandates. The signature achievement of the EEOC nowadays appears to be shaking down well being care firms that had the gall to implement COVID-19 vaccine mandates: “Under the Trump Administration, the EEOC is taking bold and aggressive steps to remedy the widespread civil rights harms during the pandemic.”
Lucas’s large civil rights achievements relating to vaccines are sadly a wee bit obscure. Whereas the press launch boasts of the EEOC recovering “over $55 million” for staff compelled to endure the phobia of the COVID-19 vaccine, it mentions just one restoration with a greenback signal, final week’s extraction of $1 million from Mercyhealth for being insufficiently solicitous of anti-vaxxers who cloak their conspiracy-mongering in faith.
Who else did the EEOC leap to guard? There’s a hyperlink to a settlement the EEOC is clearly fairly pleased with. A constitution faculty in Oklahoma had the gall to ask the particular person claiming their faith forbids them from getting vaccines to offer a letter from clergy saying that. No manner, mentioned civil rights icon Andrea Lucas! Bridge too far! If rando trainer dude says his sky god doesn’t need him to get a vaccine, you haven’t any proper to ask for any clarification or proof of these beliefs. That’s actual non secular freedom.
So what different large triumphs did the EEOC have within the final seven months? Principally, suing any firm that ever made a conservative Christian unhappy. The funniest a part of itemizing a bunch of this stuff as achievements is that many are simply hyperlinks to the EEOC asserting the submitting of a lawsuit, which isn’t the identical as successful a lawsuit or defending staff.
However every press launch does all the time function a Lucas quote like “Employers need to remember that religious rights are not second-class rights, but rather part of our nation’s first principles.” And there’s “The novelty of the COVID-19 pandemic is not a shield for employers to engage in garden-variety discrimination.” Such stirring phrases!
However what about all of the combating antisemitism that this administration is so good at? Effectively, the EEOC is claiming that the $21 million bribe that Columbia College needed to pay as a part of its large payoff to the administration is the “the largest EEOC employment discrimination resolution publicly announced in nearly 20 years; the agency’s largest ever for victims of antisemitism; the most significant religious discrimination EEOC settlement for workers of any faith; and is part of a historic multi-agency settlement achieved by the Trump Administration.”
Whoa! Historic! Would you want some particulars about what number of victims there have been, how a lot cash they’ll recuperate, and the opposite regular particulars that may kind a part of a boast in regards to the world’s greatest settlement? Effectively, you’ll be able to’t have them, as a result of this isn’t an actual settlement.
As an alternative, the cash might be distributed as it might in a category motion. There might be a claims administrator who will ship a discover to all Columbia staff to answer a questionnaire the place they will describe how they have been discriminated towards, and the claims administrator will get to determine in the event that they deserve cash.
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So, the administration will get to proceed to be the arbiter of what’s and isn’t antisemitic, however now they’ve bought $21 million of Columbia’s cash to do it with. Let’s simply all put aside our uneasy emotions in regards to the authorities demanding a listing of Jewish individuals and belief in future Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Andrea Lucas, we could?
Final however really severely not least, the EEOC highlighted its work standing up a job pressure to guard non secular freedom within the federal authorities. Oh wait, sorry. The duty pressure is just for eradicating anti-Christian bias within the federal authorities. Man, they will’t even fake, even simply all through a press launch, that non secular freedom means something besides coddling Christian conservatives for the size of a press launch.
