- The Trump administration’s attack on law firms takes aim at their diversity initiatives.
- Jones Day, a firm cozy with Trumpworld, has been spared despite having many of the same programs.
- The inquiries to law firms echo a conservative activist who took down affirmative action.
The Trump administration’s all-out legal war extends beyond the courts.
In addition to ferociously battling lawsuits over its sweeping policies, the government is targeting law firms themselves.
In the latest salvo, Andrea Lucas, the newly minted acting chair of the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, sent letters to 20 of the country’s most prominent big law firms with detailed questions about their diversity programs.
The letters piled on top a pair of executive orders where Trump targeted Perkins Coie and Paul Weiss, criticizing their diversity initiatives and complaining about how he believes the firms wronged him politically several years ago.
One law firm absent from the target list is Jones Day.
Jones Day has been closely intertwined with Trump’s White House. The firm represented Donald Trump’s 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns and the Republican National Committee in 2024.
Jones Day also appears to have many of the same diversity programs as the 20 law firms Lucas contacted.
Lucas’s letter inquired about each firm’s hiring and promotion practices and affinity groups for underrepresented demographics.
Under the header of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” a 2024 Jones Day brochure on the firm’s diversity touts how it “aggressively pursues” hiring and career development of lawyers from “historically underrepresented backgrounds.”
Every year, Jones Day hosts a “Diversity Conference” for first-year law students. This year’s is scheduled to take place in April in Atlanta, Georgia, according to its website.
The firm also has affinity groups that “celebrate diversity within our organization,” including chapters for Black, Hispanic, and LGBTQ+ lawyers.
A Jones Day representative didn’t respond to requests for comment.
A strategy years in the making
Trump’s executive orders restricted security clearance and access to government buildings for lawyers at Perkins Coie and Paul Weiss, which they say made it hard to represent their clients.
The president also issued a separate memorandum suspending security clearances of any lawyers working at Covington & Burling who’ve helped former Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith, who brought two now-dropped indictments against Trump.
In her letters to the 20 law firms, which includes Perkins Coie, Lucas warned that the law forbade hiring or promotions “motivated — in whole or in part — by race, sex, or another protected characteristic.” She also said employers are barred “from limiting, segregating, or classifying employees based on race, sex, or other protected characteristics” in a way that could deprive them of opportunities, including in affinity groups.
A group of former EEOC commissioners asked Lucas to withdraw the 20 letters, saying she had “no authority” to grill the law firms. In a March 18 letter, they said Congress required investigations to be “confidential” so the EEOC could not “intimidate employers through public pressure.”
Through an EEOC spokesperson, Lucas, who Trump appointed to the commission in his first term, declined Business Insider’s request for comment.
At a New York University law school conference panel last year, Lucas said many employers are “dead wrong” about the legality of certain diversity initiatives.
According to Lucas, the law forbids race or sex from being “part of the equation” at all, including for deciding who could attend career development or leadership programs.
“I think it is a major blind spot for employers to not scrutinize DEI programs that fall outside of hiring, firing, and compensation decisions,” she said.
The language in Lucas’s letters and public statements echoes arguments made by conservative activist Edward Blum, whose organization Students for Fair Admissions successfully persuaded the Supreme Court to end affirmative action in colleges.
Another one of his projects, American Alliance for Equal Rights, sued Perkins Coie in 2023 over its fellowships reserved exclusively for students who identified as LGBTQ+, had a disability, or were people of color. The case was dismissed after Perkins Coie agreed to change the fellowship programs.
In an email, Blum declined to answer if he’s advised members of the Trump administration. But he praised the rationale behind Lucas’s letters.
“The race-based employment practices that many law firms have used during the last few years have been deeply polarizing and illegal,” Blum wrote. “The new leadership at the EEOC, as well as other federal agencies, are to be commended for identifying these practices and, it is to be hoped, demanding they be eliminated.”
Paul Weiss effectively settled with Trump.
In a Truth Social post on Thursday night announcing he would rescind his executive order targeting the firm, the president said Paul Weiss agreed it “will not adopt, use, or pursue any DEI policies” and would spend $40 million in pro bono legal services supporting his administration’s initiatives. Trump’s post also included a statement saying Paul Weiss leader Brad Karp “acknowledged the wrongdoing” of former partner Mark Pomerantz, who had been a part of the prosecution team at the Manhattan district attorney’s office investigating his hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels.
Perkins Coie took a different tack and sued to stop Trump’s executive order targeting the firm.
Earlier in March, a court granted Perkins Coie a temporary restraining order requiring federal agencies to disregard and rescind any guidance related to Trump’s executive action. But the court order specifically didn’t apply to two paragraphs where Trump ordered the EEOC and US Attorney General to investigate “large, influential, or industry leading law firms” for “compliance with race-based and sex-based non-discrimination laws.”
Diversity programs like affinity groups would only be unlawful if they aren’t open to all employees who want to join, according to Asker Saeed, an attorney who advises law firms on DEI issues.
Most law firms appear to be “staying the course” on their employee diversity programs while keeping a watchful eye on Trump, he said.
“As it stands right now, the law is still the law,” Saeed said. “What was legal before the Trump administration came in is still legal. And what was illegal before the Trump administration came in is still illegal.”
Chilling the legal profession
The rank-and-file of Jones Day predominantly supports Democrats. In the 2024 election, its employees donated five times as much money to Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign compared to Trump’s, according to Federal Elections Committee data compiled by Open Secrets.
Trump has lashed out against lawyers who have turned against him, such as Michael Cohen, who worked at the Trump Organization for decades before becoming the key witness in his Manhattan criminal trial.
Upon those who remain loyal, Trump heaps rewards. Pamela Bondi, who defended Trump in his first impeachment trial, is now Attorney General. Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, his lawyers in the Manhattan criminal case, now serve in other top Justice Department posts. Alina Habba, Trump’s go-to lawyer for personal cases, is now a White House advisor.
Don McGahn, a prominent Jones Day lawyer, served as White House counsel during Trump’s first term, leading the selection of federal court appointments. And the firm’s attorneys have continued to find their way to powerful positions in the second Trump administration.
Over at Jones Day, high salaries and proximity to power have helped make it an attractive employer — since 2011, it’s hired nearly 100 former US Supreme Court clerks.
Other elite Trump-friendly firms, like Sullivan & Cromwell, which agreed to appeal his Manhattan criminal conviction, and Troutman Pepper Locke, which represented Trump family members in the New York Attorney General’s civil fraud trial against the Trump Organization, are also missing from the EEOC list.
Earlier this month, the president of the American Bar Association criticized “a clear and disconcerting pattern” where Trump targeted lawyers representing “parties the administration does not like” to intimidate critics.
“Clients have the right to have access to their lawyer without interference by the government,” William R. Bay said in a statement. “Lawyers must be free to represent clients and perform their ethical duty without fear of retribution.”
