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Diversity

Diversity references scrubbed from BigLaw websites amid DEI probes; informal guidance issued

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 20, 2025, 11:57 am CDT

BigLaw firms are scrubbing diversity mentions from their websites and reexamining policies amid the Trump administration’s attack on diversity, equity and inclusion programs that it considers to be illegal.

Many law firms began changing their websites even before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission asked 20 firms to supply information on their DEI practices. Publications covering the changes include Law.com, Above the Law and Bloomberg Law.

The EEOC has published informal guidance on DEI measures that can constitute illegal discrimination in a document and a website Q&A, Bloomberg Law reports.

The document, issued jointly with the U.S. Department of Justice, said DEI programs may be illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act if they involve an employment action “motivated—in whole or in part—by an employee’s race, sex or another protected characteristic.”

Prohibited conduct may include exclusion from fellowships, training, mentoring and employee affinity groups, the document said.

According to media reports, these firms are reacting:

  • DLA Piper has disbanded minority organizations and affinity groups. It also removed preferred pronouns from signature blocks on employee emails. (Bloomberg Law, Above the Law)

  • Kirkland & Ellis took references to a diversity and inclusion fellowship offline and has a new webpage touting a “Welcoming Environment.” (Law.com)

  • K&L Gates removed references to “diversity” from its website, changed the name of its Diversity and Inclusion Committee to the Opportunity and Inclusion Committee and has an “Opportunity and Inclusion” webpage. (Above the Law, ABAJournal.com, Law.com)

  • A Proskauer Rose webpage describing affinity groups is now titled “Inclusion.” Articles referring to diversity efforts now have URLs that go to the “Inclusion” page. (Above the Law)

  • Hogan Lovells has renamed “diversity, equity and inclusion” to “HL inclusion.” A DEI video has also been removed. (Law.com)

  • Latham & Watkins has redirected a DEI webpage to a page entitled, “At Latham & Watkins, you belong as you are.” The firm also removed a paragraph referring to “institutional racism.” And the firm apparently changed the name of its “diversity scholars program” to “pathways scholars program.” (Law.com)

  • Squire Patton Boggs highlights “inclusion” on the firm landing page and apparently renamed its “Global Office of DEI.” It has been replaced with a reference to “Global Workplace Culture and Development Leadership.” (Law.com)

  • Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and Sidley Austin have apparently updated their landing page to reference “inclusion.” (Law.com)

See also:

EEOC chair requested ‘extensive’ info from law firms on DEI practices and hiring; did it cross a line?

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Health Law

Federal guidance on stabilizing emergency abortions can’t be enforced in Texas, 5th Circuit says

By Debra Cassens Weiss

January 3, 2024, 10:20 am CST

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the federal government can’t enforce guidance in Texas that requires hospitals to provide stabilizing emergency abortions to prevent serious jeopardy to a patient’s health in emergency situations.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at New Orleans ruled for the state of Texas in its challenge to federal guidance interpreting the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, known as the EMTALA. The federal law applies to hospitals that receive Medicare funds.

The appeals court said the guidance “exceeds the statutory language” and “goes beyond EMTALA by mandating abortion.” The guidance alters a substantive legal standard, and it should have been subject to notice and comment, as required by the Medicare Act, the 5th Circuit said in a Jan. 2 opinion by Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt.

The appeals court upheld an injunction barring enforcement of the guidance in Texas and against members of two organizations that joined Texas to challenge the law. The two groups are the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists and Christian Medical & Dental Associations.

Reuters, Bloomberg Law and Courthouse News Service are among the publications with coverage. How Appealing linked to additional coverage.

The EMTALA requires necessary stabilizing treatment for an emergency medical condition regardless of a patient’s ability to pay. The law defines an emergency medical condition as a condition that, without medical treatment, could reasonably be expected to result in serious impairment to bodily functions, serious dysfunction to any bodily organ, or serious jeopardy to the health of the patient (or in the case of a pregnant person, the health of the person or their unborn child).

The guidance issued by the Biden administration states that a physician must perform an abortion if a pregnant patient has an emergency condition as defined by the EMTALA, and abortion is the necessary stabilizing treatment. The guidance states that state law is preempted if it categorically bans abortion or if the state law has a lifesaving exception that is more narrow than the EMTALA’s definition of an emergency medical condition.

But the EMTALA “does not govern the practice of medicine,” the appeals court said. “While EMTALA directs physicians to stabilize patients once an emergency medical condition has been diagnosed,” the 5th Circuit said, “the practice of medicine is to be governed by the states.”

The Texas abortion ban, known as the Human Life Protection Act, bans abortions unless the pregnancy “places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function.”

The Texas law does not directly conflict with the EMTALA, the appeals court said, because it “does not stand in the way of providing stabilizing treatment for a pregnant woman or the unborn child.” The EMTALA requires hospitals “to stabilize both the pregnant woman and her unborn child.”

“EMTALA does not provide an unqualified right for the pregnant mother to abort her child especially when EMTALA imposes equal stabilization obligations,” the appeals court said.

The case is Texas v. Becerra.

It follows a Texas Supreme Court ruling last month that held that a woman whose fetus has a genetic abnormality that is nearly always fatal can’t get an abortion under Texas law.