A Trump executive order reportedly has ended a racial discrimination probe at Tesla
A recent executive order kneecapped a key Labor Department office responsible for investigating federal contractors — including Elon Musk’s Tesla — that have been accused of workplace discrimination.
Feb. 10, 2025, 5:47 PM EST
By
Ja'han Jones
Policy proposals from the new administration — and the seemingly unmatched power granted to
Elon Musk and his allies — sure do suggest that
Donald Trump is trying to serve his megarich benefactor more than nearly anyone else.
Whether it’s punishing South Africa
for attempting to stem the impact of apartheid racism or giving
bigoted white men unfettered access to the
upper echelon of the U.S. government, it seems Trump and his allies are ensuring that Musk gets ample returns on
the multimillion-dollar investment he made in Trump’s campaign.
And the apparent benefits to Musk could also include the suspension of a federal probe into allegations of racial discrimination at his company Tesla.
An executive order Trump
signed Jan. 21 as part of his crusade against diversity required the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, which is part of the Department of Labor and investigates discrimination allegations, to immediately halt “[p]romoting ‘diversity’” and “[h]olding Federal contractors and subcontractors responsible for taking ‘affirmative action.’” According to The San Francisco Standard, the order essentially required the compliance office to stop an audit of Tesla over allegations of discrimination at one of its automobile factories.
The Standard reported:
The Standard reported that Tesla was recently notified that the discrimination probe had been halted. Other large corporations were made aware of dropped investigations into their workplaces, too:
According to The Standard, a federal lawsuit against Tesla from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is ongoing. When the lawsuit was announced in 2023,
the EEOC said: “Black employees regularly encountered graffiti, including variations of the N-word, swastikas, threats, and nooses, on desks and other equipment, in bathroom stalls, within elevators, and even on new vehicles rolling off the production line.” The EEOC also said that “those who raised objections to racial hostility suffered various forms of retaliation, including terminations, changes in job duties, transfers, and other adverse employment actions.”
Tesla has called the allegations “a false narrative that ignores Tesla’s track record of equal employment opportunity.”
It’s unclear how the lawsuit progresses from here. Trump’s acting EEOC chair, Andrea Lucas,
has already gotten to work pursuing his priorities of rolling back protections for transgender and nonbinary people. How she’ll approach a discrimination suit against one of Trump’s closest allies remains an open question.
