Executive Order Prohibiting Divisive Workplace Trainings

On September 22, 2020, President Trump issued Executive Order 13950, an Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping (the "Order"), prohibiting federal contractors from conducting workplace diversity or implicit-bias training that promotes "divisive concepts" or perpetuates the belief that "America is an irredeemably racist and sexist country." The Order, which also directs federal agencies to look for ways to impose the same restrictions on federal grant recipients, followed a September 4, 2020 Memorandum from the Office of Management and Budget ("OMB") that instructed federal agencies to identify any potentially "un-American" workplace training programs that teach critical race theory or white privilege to federal employees. The new Order appears intended to target the types of anti-racism workplace training programs that have proliferated in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent national reckoning with institutionalized racism.