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President Donald Trump's executive order aimed at ending diversity, equity, and inclusion has effectively ended a clause that explicitly prohibited racially segregated facilities.
According to NPR, the General Services Administration issued a public memo last month that it was "making changes prompted by President Trump’s executive order on diversity, equity, and inclusion, which repealed an executive order signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 regarding federal contractors and nondiscrimination.”
The memo effectively eliminated Clause 52.222-21 in the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) that prohibited contractors from having segregated restaurants, waiting rooms, and drinking fountains. FAR is used by agencies to write contracts for anyone providing goods or services to the federal government.
"The Contractor agrees that it does not and will not maintain or provide for its employees any segregated facilities at any of its establishments and that it does not and will not permit its employees to perform their services at any location under its control where segregated facilities are maintained," the FAR Clause, titled “Prohibition of Segregated Facilities,” reads.
Under the now-eliminated clause, facilities such as work areas, restaurants, drinking fountains, transportation, housing, and more were protected from segregation on the basis of “race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin.”
Though there are still federal and state laws in place that prohibit segregation, the elimination of the clause is still significant and dangerous, according to experts.
“It’s symbolic, but it’s incredibly meaningful in its symbolism,” Melissa Murray, a constitutional law professor at New York University, said in a statement. “These provisions that required federal contractors to adhere to and comply with federal civil rights laws and to maintain integrated rather than segregated workplaces were all part of the federal government’s efforts to facilitate the settlement that led to integration in the 1950s and 1960s.
“The fact that they are now excluding those provisions from the requirements for federal contractors, I think, speaks volumes,” Murray added.
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