Project 2025 Aims to Change Anti-Discrimination Laws

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a policy document that could inform changes to federal anti-discrimination efforts concerning disability rights, entails several controversial priorities. The plan is based on a vision of a potential second Trump administration and aims, among other things, to render the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s enforcement of consent decrees illegal. EEOC’s consent decrees underpin its anti-discrimination efforts and helped secure workplace rights for people with disabilities, whose rates of employment discrimination remain severely high compared to non-disabled populations.

While the Heritage Foundation’s viewpoint expressed in Project 2025 concerning consent decrees is shared by many in conservative circles, it has also proven a cause of controversy. Two attorneys at law schools in New York City and Florida point out that the conservatively-inclined scholars who critique EEOC’s consent decrees for exceeding existing laws ignore the beneficial effects they produce. According to Robyn Powell and Shira Wakschlag, one of such instances occurred when the defendant, a government contractor, agreed to a $1 million settlement. Apart from the monetary compensation, the contract also contained a provision requiring the employer to adopt new policies or amend the existing ones, as well as ensure training for its managers concerning the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Thus, eliminating the EEOC’s capability to enforce consent decrees would translate to its function of providing technical assistance being merely a show of activity. This situation, in turn, would mean that the employment landscape would remain bleak for a population of people with disabilities who are already marginalized in this area. However, Project 2025, which seeks to achieve additional goals that people with liberal political opinions find controversial, prompted similarly conclusive reactions in public opinion. Thus, the controversial policy document may indicate how conservative leaders fail to represent a substantial portion of the American population’s desires and preferences. Since ideas have the power to shape policy debates and electoral politics, the Heritage Foundation’s policy document has significance in determining the future of the country’s politics.