U.S. Equal Opportunity and Employment Commissioner Andrea Lucas has denounced Mark Cuban for his recent tweets in support of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).
Lucas spoke with Fox News on Wednesday in response to Cuban’s belief that “race and gender can be part of the equation,” when considering whether or not to hire somebody. Lucas declared that Cuban’s sentiments were “just fundamentally wrong.”
Using characteristics, like race or sex, to make hiring decisions can even be an actionable civil rights violation, Lucas explained:
"If any employer, whether private or public, uses race or sex or any other protected characteristic, particularly race or sex, as any factor in their decision-making process for any employment decision, then they've violated Title VII and an employee that's been harmed can file a complaint with the EEOC and then, if they get a right to sue letter, they can file in federal court."
Lucas also did not mince words concerning the subject of racial and sexual hiring quotas:
“Quotas absolutely are a direct violation of Title VII,” she noted, “so if you are indicating that goal really is an actual requirement or a hard target, that you will be hiring this amount of people or you will be promoting this amount of people, that’s absolutely a facial violation of Title VII.”
Beyond the potential illegality of DEI practices, Lucas deconstructed the terminology associated with the ideology and what it actually means:
“I like fairness. Who doesn't like fairness? I like equality. What's wrong with equity? But the reason that there's been a shift from focusing on equal employment opportunity to equity is for a reason.
“Words mean something, and equity and equality are not the same concept. What matters,” Lucas added, “is that employers are treating all of their employees the same without relying on their skin color or their sex or other protected characteristics.”
Cuban has appeared to take a certain measure of Lucas’ comments to heart, as a conversation with her on X led him to conclude that “smart people can disagree on these issues.”
Then again, it is also quite possible that Cuban is beginning to realize that Lucas is only the latest public figure to drop the hammer over his stance on DEI. Last month, billionaire and entrepreneur Elon Musk tore into his billionaire peer for espousing “racist” DEI ideology. Perhaps Cuban has come to fear that the denunciations of his DEI support will only continue to escalate.