Donald Trump’s top appointees have brought with them some terrifying headlines about what they plan to do to the United States. But what’s equally terrifying is that below the people who make headlines are hundreds more Republicans doing Trump’s will in ways that you might not hear about—but that will do damage nonetheless. Take Victoria Lipnic, acting chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Because Lipnic has been on the EEOC, we can look at how she’s voted on actual cases, and the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Will Evans has done just that.
Lipnic also opposed bringing lawsuits against:
- Georgia Power Company for systematically discriminating against disabled job applicants and workers. The company was accused of rejecting workers even though they had doctors’ opinions that they could work. Last year, it agreed to pay nearly $1.6 million and change its policies.
- A financial services company for harassing a transgender employee with epithets and refusing to let her use the women’s restroom. Last year, Deluxe Financial Services Corp. settled for $115,000 and promised to send an apology letter to the employee.
- An Arizona trucking company, for failing to accommodate workers with disabilities, including firing a woman who needed more time to recover from eye surgeries. CTI Inc. paid $300,000 in 2015 and changed its policies.
That was under Barack Obama, when Lipnic was in the minority. Now she’ll be in the majority, and what’s more, she’s taking her cues on what matters from Trump:
“We enforce some of the most important civil rights laws in the country. Having said that, it is a new administration,” she said in a Feb. 9 speech to her former law firm, which represents employers in labor cases. “And President Trump has made it very clear that he is interested in jobs, jobs, jobs.”
When you’re like “yes, I’m supposed to enforce civil rights laws, but,” we have a problem.
Jobs, jobs, jobs—and free license to employers to discriminate. Also, fittingly for someone working under a man who mocked a disabled reporter, “Half of her no votes came in disability cases.”
And here’s the scary thing: Lipnic was the less horrible choice. The other Republican commissioner she served with “voted against more than twice as many cases.”