Do you currently enjoy a workplace environment that is free of violent criminals? Is your work bathroom reserved for members of the same sex as you? You might not enjoy those commonsense benefits for much longer. The Biden administration is flexing the bureaucratic state’s muscle to force businesses to comply with its progressive worldview.
Last month, the Biden administration’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced that it was suing Sheetz, a popular gas station and convenience store chain in the mid-Atlantic, for alleged racially discriminatory hiring practices.
Sheetz is a great American success story. It was opened by Bob Sheetz in 1950 in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and is still owned by the Sheetz family to this day. It is most aptly compared to Wawa but, as a native Marylander, I can confirm that Sheetz is way better. I have fond memories of hitting Sheetz for subs after all-day track meets in high school or eating mozzarella sticks in the parking lot while waiting to hear whose house the party was at that night. It is an institution in this area.
So why is the Biden administration accusing Sheetz of racism? Because they won’t hire convicted criminals. Seriously.
According to the EEOC lawsuit, Sheetz racially discriminates in its hiring practices because they make decisions about whom to hire based on criminal background checks.
“Sheetz has maintained a longstanding practice of screening all job applicants for records of criminal conviction and then denying them employment based on those records,” a statement from the EEOC says. “The EEOC charges that Sheetz’s hiring practices disproportionately screened out black, Native American/Alaska Native and multiracial applicants.”
The EEOC doesn’t accuse Sheetz of making decisions based on race, but says that because Sheetz’s method of screening out certain applicants with a criminal background has a “disparate impact” on racial minorities, it violates Title VII.
Sheetz’s website notes that they are an equal opportunity employer, which means they don’t automatically filter out all job candidates who have a criminal history. Instead, they make a case-by-case decision based on the details of each candidate’s criminal background. Their exact screening processes are not public, but let’s think like a business owner for a moment. You might be willing to hire people who have been charged with misdemeanors or non-violent crimes, or you may be willing to give a second chance to someone who only has one previous offense. But you’d probably draw a red line at violent or repeat offenders. Well, racial minorities are not only disproportionately more likely to commit all forms of crime; they are also disproportionately more likely to be violent offenders and have higher rates of recidivism. FBI statistics even indicate that blacks commit a larger share of white-collar crime than their population would suggest.
Plus, as James Bovard points out in the New York Post, the gap between whites and blacks who fail Sheetz’s background check is actually smaller than the gap between incarceration rates for these two groups. Is that not proof that Sheetz is in fact making racially progressive hiring decisions?
The EEOC’s lawsuit makes clear, though, that no matter how Sheetz makes its hiring decisions for people with a criminal history, they can be accused of disparate impact. They could literally just be screening out murderers, but according to the Biden administration, that’s no bueno because that policy has a disparate impact on racial minorities. And if we take the EEOC’s premise that the criminal justice system is racist, and that’s the only reason racial minorities commit disproportionately more crimes than whites, why on Earth should Sheetz — a gas station! — be responsible for remedying those wrongs and risking the safety of their other employees and customers?
You will hire criminals and you will like it, says the EEOC.
This is, sadly, not the only rule coming out of the EEOC that affects business owners and their employees. Also in April, the agency published its final guidance regarding how workplaces have to treat transgender employees under anti-discrimination law. Many conservatives warned in 2020 that the Bostock decision, which found that Title VII protects against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, would render some pretty bad outcomes.
Sure enough, the new EEOC guidance finds that employers may be guilty of harassment if they repeatedly misgender trans employees or “deny access to a bathroom or other sex-segregated facility consistent with the individual’s gender identity.” What this means in practice is that a business cannot have sex-segregated bathrooms; a man who identifies as a woman must be allowed to use the women’s bathroom, even if it makes actual women feel unsafe or uncomfortable. The rule applies to all federal workers and private businesses with more than fifteen employees.
A group of eighteen red states filed a lawsuit today against the EEOC to block these new rules. They say that the EEOC does not have the power to force employers to use a transgender employee’s preferred pronouns or give them access to bathrooms reserved for members of the opposite sex. They also argue that the Bostock decision protects transgender employees from being fired due to their gender identity, but does not require employers to take affirmative steps to accommodate them, Reuters reports.
“EEOC has no authority to resolve these highly controversial and localized issues, which are properly reserved for Congress and the states,” the lawsuit says.
The Biden administration is also fielding a legal challenge against the Department of Education’s changes to Title IX rules, which similarly forces public schools to avoid “discrimination” against transgender students by giving males access to female locker rooms, showers, bathrooms, dorms and other traditionally sex-segregated spaces.
From the classroom to the board room, the Biden administration is trying to force everyone to throw away common sense and abide by its radical views of race and gender.
Boy Scouts changes name
Last week, the Boy Scouts announced it is changing its name to “Scouting America.” This is the latest step the organization has taken in the hopes of boosting membership by being more “inclusive”; they previously opened membership up to girls and transgender boys. The Boy Scouts leadership clearly does not understand why their membership has declined.
Some of the reasons are out of their control. I wrote in last week’s newsletter about the rise in “safetyism” as it relates to what parents allow their children to do outside of the home. Parents these days don’t appreciate their kids engaging in risky behavior and like to be tethered to them via phone throughout the day. These attitudes, combined with kids getting access to addictive technology at younger ages, means that fewer boys are going to be comfortable or allowed to go off camping, make fires and play with pocket knives.
Anecdotally, troop leaders say that young boys are more interested in youth sports and that, in some areas, scouting is not considered cool.
One major issue, however, the Boy Scouts haven’t addressed enough to earn back the trust of parents are the high rates of sexual abuse in its scouting programs. Of course, this has brought a huge financial strain on the organization. There are tens of thousands of reported abuse victims; the Boy Scouts settled a lawsuit in 2022 where they promised to pay out $2.46 billion to more than 82,000 men who say they were abused. Boy Scouts has strengthened its policies regarding adult troop leaders and chaperones since the worst of the scandal broke, but many parents still say they don’t trust the Boy Scouts with their children. Michael Johnson, a whistleblower and former BSA official who was tasked with child protection, says he still doesn’t believe the program is safe for kids.
Making Boy Scouts more “inclusive” might expand the potential membership pool, but it doesn’t change the reasons why kids aren’t joining. It arguably makes the problem worse. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts were great from a programming perspective because they allowed kids to enjoy a safe space with other kids who understood the sex-specific experiences they were having. There is a reason why children tend to perform better in sex-segregated schools. Both boys and girls thrive when placed in environments where their innate differences are understood and respected rather than repressed and erased.
The Boy Scouts, despite its scandals, once provided many boys with a place away from their parents where they could find themselves and develop the tools needed to become a man. If this unique environment is removed from the experience, what even is the point of Scouting America?
