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The EEOC’s inquiries will intensify in 2026 with all the tools the agency plans to employ, including expanded web-archive searches to target companies that have only changed how they’ve talked about DEI.

Her focus is on “race-restricted programs or sex-restricted programs or other actions that involve overt distinctions between people based on race,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if you call that DEI or belonging or ‘EO’ or anything: If it functions like that, it’s illegal.”

Lucas’s new direction follows Trump’s flurry of executive orders earlier this year, including two that targeted DEI initiatives, such as mandatory racial equity trainings for staff.

The move prompted several Fortune 500 companies — including Target, Walmart and Amazon, all of which employ large numbers of workers from historically marginalized groups — to scrap or reassess such initiatives altogether.

In response, some companies quietly stripped DEI language from policy documents and recruitment messaging, while others went further, dissolving employee resource groups and ending longstanding efforts to diversify their supplier networks.