Newly issued guidance from the Department of the Interior grants whistleblower status to anyone who reports “DEI-based discrimination,” which it defines as workplace actions motivated by an employee’s protected background characteristics, according to a leaked internal memo.
The changes are meant to ensure that “all employment decisions are based on merit,” an unnamed department spokesperson told SFGATE. The guidance repurposes language in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that originally banned “discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin,” instead prohibiting policies aimed at diversifying the federal workforce. The new guidelines encourage employees to report one another over suspected breaches stretching back over the past three years, along with any associated retaliation.
“I’ve never seen the Civil Rights Act weaponized in this way, and it seems like such a willful misinterpretation of the language and intent,” said Charles F. Sams III, the first Indigenous director of the National Park Service, who served under the Biden administration from 2021 to 2025. “The purpose of the National Park Service is to protect and preserve natural and cultural resources, and you must have a diverse landscape in order for an ecosystem to function. There’s no reason we as humans should be any different.”
The guidelines, which were leaked shortly after chief human capital officer Rachel Borra released them on March 18, follow two executive orders signed during the...
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