SACRAMENTO, California — The U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday it had opened an investigation into the California Environmental Protection Agency for possible discriminatory hiring practices.
What happened: Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon told California EPA Secretary Yana Garcia in a Wednesday notice that the investigation will focus on whether the agency’s stated efforts to advance racial equity in its workforce violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, sex and national origin. The notice also cites the California Air Resources Board for efforts to “advance race-based decision-making within the agency”
“Specifically, CalEPA’s ‘Practices to Advance Racial Equity in Workforce Planning’ indicates that your agency may be using protected characteristics such as race, color, sex, or national origin to “increase equity in [your] hiring, promotion and retention practices and policies,” wrote Dhillon, who was previously a California Republican Party official central to the state’s culture-war battles and now oversees the Justice Department’s civil rights division.
Spokespeople for CalEPA and CARB did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday morning.
