President Biden's Executive Orders & the Workplace

Reposted from SHRM.org:

Following his inauguration Wednesday, President Joe Biden signed 17 executive actions that include orders, memorandum and agency directives. Advancing racial equity, support for underserved communities and protecting workers from COVID-19 were among the measures. Those that affect the workplace include:

• Defining equity as "the consistent and systematic fair, just, and impartial treatment of all individuals, including individuals who belong to underserved communities, such as Black, Latino, Indigenous and Native American persons, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and other persons of color; people identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ); people with disabilities; religious minorities; persons who live in rural areas; and persons otherwise affected by persistent poverty or inequality."

• Requiring all federal agencies to review equity within their ranks and deliver an action plan within 200 days to address unequal barriers to opportunity found within agency policies and programs.

• Revoking former President Donald Trump's executive order that limited the ability of federal government agencies, contractors and some grantees from implementing some diversity and inclusion training.

• Ensuring that the federal government interprets Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as prohibiting workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. This order will also direct agencies to take all lawful steps to make sure that federal anti-discrimination statutes that cover sex discrimination prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, protecting the rights of LGBTQ individuals.

• Studying new methods that federal agencies can use to assess whether proposed policies advance equity.

• Asking Congress to enact legislation that gives permanent status and a path to citizenship to people who came to the U.S. as children and have lived and worked here for many years.

• Launching a "100 Days Masking Challenge" with an executive order that requires masks and physical distancing in all federal buildings, on all federal lands, and by federal employees and contractors as an example to other employers around the nation. Biden will ask the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to work with state, local, tribal and territorial officials to implement masking, physical distancing and other CDC public measures to stop the spread of COVID-19.

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CGWG will monitor the impact of these Executive Orders and will update our clients as developments continue to occur.