On the Basis of Sex (and Everything Else): Why Ruth Bader Ginsburg Would Support EO 14151 to Dismantle DEI

22 September 2025

Mary Beth West, APR, FPRCA

Hollywood’s 2018 biopic “On the Basis of Sex” lauded the career triumphs of the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who remains widely embraced with “patron saint” status for her bold stances on equal rights and non-discrimination.

The film’s plot centers on Justice Ginsburg’s early career from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, inclusive of her fight for one client who was indisputably being discriminated against unfairly and in violation of the U.S. Constitution, on the basis of sex (hence, the film’s title).

Her client: an unmarried white man.

Charles Moritz had claimed an Internal Revenue Service tax deduction under IRS rules that originally were written and enforced by the federal government to give “a woman or widower” or “a husband whose wife is incapacitated or is institutionalized” a tax deduction for hardship.

The IRS denied to Mr. Moritz his request for a tax deduction because he was male and unmarried. (The never-married Mr. Moritz sought to claim the deduction because his hardship arose from having to care for his invalid mother, who refused nursing home care.)

In 1972, then-Attorney Ginsburg argued Moritz v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue as the first gender-discrimination lawsuit that she ever represented in court. On appeal, Ginsburg emerged victorious – arguing that a never-married male deserved the same rights as a woman / widow or a widower would receive, under the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.

That clause states that no U.S. / state government agency may “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,” and these equal protections include “a person’s race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related conditions, transgender status, sexual orientation), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information” (source: U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission).

Fast-forward to 2025.

None of the above-listed protected classes under U.S. law have been voided, and no one in the Trump White House has proposed they be dismantled… despite whatever false and misleading AI claptrap has been pre-programmed to spit out to you, on request.

Fact: If any U.S. citizen is provably discriminated against in a workplace on the basis of any of those protected classes, they likely have standing to sue.

Yet since Donald Trump was elected to his second term as President of the United States, the whole of the PR industry, it seems – which skews vastly to the political left in not only partisan preferences and pro-Diversity/Equity/Inclusion (DEI) stances but also in general Trump-hate – has behaved since January 20 as though their sky is falling down. (See PRWeek’s January 2023 analysis piece by Chris Daniels, “Is PR Too Liberal for its Own Good?”)

Numerous PR industry conference sessions, webinars, and discussion panels ensued immediately upon President Trump taking office, for the specific reason of Executive Order 14151, entitled “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing,” signed on the day of his inauguration.

Most international public relations professionals may have heard about this Executive Order, but I’d be willing to bet that few have actually read it.

Heck. I’d be willing to wager that the percentage of even U.S.-based PR pros who’ve bothered to read it is in the low single digits. Sadly, our industry over the past decade has not been too high on doing its own homework on DEI, while some of these same PR colleagues love to check their own homework.

If DEI has been your passion in PR – but you’ve opted not even to peruse current U.S. Department of Justice memoranda explaining the basis of EO 14151 which is driving U.S. government contractors’ (and boardrooms’ / C-suites’) shifts in DEI corporate policy – then you are making a mistake of epic proportion. If you don’t know the facts, how can you balance any hope of providing competent PR counsel with current U.S. legal context?

The DEI concept, as it were, was launched years ago, seemingly predicated on universal non-discrimination. However, DEI quickly morphed into improper and widely unregulated discrimination against particular “disfavored demographics.”

Ever since this bait-and-switch took hold, DEI has provided favorable treatment and “inclusive” open doors to certain groups but disfavored treatment toward others, often for any variety of politically motivated reasons.

Unequal treatment given to anyone under the protected classes risks violating equal-protection guarantees under the U.S. Constitution – the very kind that Justice Ginsburg famously fought for successfully.

On July 29, 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) released “Guidance for Recipients of Federal Funding Regarding Unlawful Discrimination.”

PR professionals would be well-advised to understand the basis of discriminatory violations described at length in this easy-to-read, nine-page memo.

This memo describes clear violations of U.S. civil rights laws that plainly and persistently exist in far too many DEI programs in workplaces and academia, on the basis of sex, race, religion, and other protected classes. Per the DOJ, such violations include:

• “Race-Based Scholarships or Programs”
• “Preferential Hiring or Promotion Practices”
• “Access to Facilities or Resources Based on Race or Ethnicity”
• Use of “Unlawful Proxies” for “Protected Characteristics” such as “’Cultural Competence’ Requirements,” “Geographic or Institutional Targeting,” and “’Overcoming Obstacles’ Narratives” and “Diversity Statements”
• “Race- or Sex-Based Program Participation”
• “Training Programs That Promote Discrimination or Hostile Environments”
• “Trainings That Promote Discrimination Based on Protected Characteristics”
• And more.

For our PR colleagues keen to simply call “DEI” by other fancy words or misleading monikers, the DOJ is on to you.

“Facially neutral criteria” that nonetheless “violate federal law if designed or applied with the intention of advantaging or disadvantaging individuals based on protected characteristics” will present potential of “significant legal risks” for organizations engaging in them, according to the DOJ memo.

DEI discrimination is discrimination and thus unlawful – even if the person being discriminated against is… dare we say it?!… the white guy.

As such – like it or not – the 1972 version of equal-protection-enthusiast Ruth Bader Ginsburg would be proud of the July 2025 DOJ memo.

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts – a Ginsburg contemporary on the Court – wrote in 2007, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

Simple!

To wit, the DOJ has pointed out, “Entities that receive federal funds, like all other entities subject to federal antidiscrimination laws, must ensure that their programs and activities comply with federal law and do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, religion, or other protected characteristics—no matter the program’s labels, objectives, or intentions.”

Among other things, what’s ethically corrupt yet rarely spoken about the PR industry’s widespread celebration of DEI so-called “principles” and practices is the money being made by PR agencies and mega-conglomerates, off DEI’s divisiveness and resulting drummed-up reputational crises (or threats of crisis).

According to inclusionscore.org, “in 2020, it was estimated that companies worldwide spent $7.5 billion on DEI-related efforts — $9.4 Billion in the year 2022, a figure that is projected to more than double to $15.4 billion by 2026 and $24.3 Billion by 2030.”

Clearly, the PR industry has clamored for its profit-grab of DEI’s lucrative consulting pie, particularly under the DEI-enthusiastic Biden/Harris Administration.

Ironically, from an ethics standpoint, “inciting racial tensions” was the very rationale that the London-based Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) used as the basis of its famous expulsion of Bell Pottinger in 2017, which sent the U.K. PR firm into receivership. (Critics later pointed out that this decision was rendered by a PRCA panel composed in part of Bell Pottinger’s own direct competitors – a valid antitrust concern.)

Yet today, sadly – a mere eight years later – “inciting racial tensions” and other forms of animus appear to be the name of PR’s DEI game.  

My personal observation: It appears that nearly all PR associations are 100% in favor of enabling or turning a blind eye to DEI’s negative impact on stoking racial, gender and even religious tensions, if it means more economic demand within PR’s Holy Church of the Monthly Retainer.

For example, one U.S. PR association – which still offers (at least for now) race-based scholarships – declared in February 2025 it was “doubling down on DEI.” This same association invested $125,000 in member funds during the 2020 COVID year (when it simultaneously registered a $1.4 million net loss of member dollars) into a now-financially failing DEI third-party organization focused on promoting race-based hiring and job advancement in the PR sector.

This PR association made its bold “doubling down on DEI” pronouncement only weeks after EO 14151 was released.

And by “bold,” I actually mean, “legally noncompliant” for many if not most of its own members, who work under government employment or contract.

After all, thousands of this association’s own members manage communication for government and military institutions that pay these PR staffers’ paychecks via taxpayer-funded payrolls. Many other thousands of association members work for corporations that contract with government institutions and therefore are required to comply with EO 14151, if they want to keep their contracts.

All of these PR folks risk violating EO 14151 and DOJ guidance if they click their heels to this specific PR member association’s DEI drum and choose to “double down on DEI” in their own workplaces, as duly instructed by this unaccountable PR association.

Translated: They could be fired.

A separate U.S.-based association of PR firms promotes a portion of its website under the dubious moniker, “DEI is Good for Business,” despite countless, credible academic studies and media citations over years that patently disprove such claims:

• On December 1, 2022, Harvard Business Review reported in “The Failure of the DEI-Industrial Complex” that “There’s a big, poorly kept secret in the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) industry: the actual efficacy of an uncomfortably large proportion of our ‘flagship’ services, talking points, and interventions — unconscious bias training, racial sensitivity workshops, the ‘business case for diversity,’ resume anonymization, and the like — is lower than many practitioners make it out to be.”
• David Millard Haskell’s citation-heavy white paper in February 2024 for the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy in Canada, openly stated “REALITY CHECK: What DEI research concludes about diversity training: it is divisive, counter-productive, and unnecessary.” Dr. Haskell reported cultures of bullying, harassment, humiliation, retaliation, and resulting workforce mental-wellness consequences (including incidents of suicide) within workplaces and classrooms when DEI “trainings” are even questioned.
• Harvard Business Review published on June 14, 2024, “Research: The Most Common DEI Practices Actually Undermine Diversity” (Sitzmann, Schwartz, Stansifer), yet the PR industry largely turned a blind eye to it – obviously because the findings ran counter to PR’s prevailing for-profit DEI talking points.
• In November 2024, Pew Research Center reported new data showing “American workers’ opinions on the role of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the workplace have become more negative since last year.” Pew reported that while only “about half of workers overall (52%) say their company or organization pays about the right amount of attention to increasing DEI,” “a growing share of workers say their company pays too much attention to increasing DEI,” including white, Black and Hispanic workers. Pew also stated, “Republicans and Democrats are both more likely than in 2023 to say their company pays too much attention to increasing DEI.”
• NBC News reported in March 2025, “American voters are deeply divided on DEI programs and political correctness.” The report stated, “Half of registered voters (49%) in the NBC News poll say DEI programs should be eliminated ‘because they create divisions and inefficiencies in the workplace by putting too much emphasis on race and other social factors over merit, skills and experience.’”
• In May 2024, data analytics expert Dr. Eric Sandosham observed in his piece, “The Problem with DEI,” that “Terms like ’diversity’, ‘equity’, and ‘inclusion’ are what we call latent variables in data analytics. Latent variables are either hypothetical constructs or they are unobservable, and we need to identify or create proxies to be able to measure them.” Sandosham further noted, “Without structured data-oriented thinking, DEI simply devolves into experimental policies and programmes without any clear understanding of the causes and effects.”

Those observations cut to the core of DEI’s egregious failure as a legally unaccountable “justice” delivery system: too many organizations (and their PR teams) define and deliver DEI as whatever they want it to be.

And many of those “whatever’s” are patently illegal – at least in terms of U.S. civil rights law.

Not helping matters in the PR industry, it appears we in PR are lorded over by an unspoken censorship of hear-no-evil / speak-no-evil about DEI. While the industry opines its devotion to things like “democracy” and “free speech,” it nonetheless clamps down on DEI data truth. Rarely will you read DEI criticism in the PR trade press or hear a whisper of it from a PR industry conference stage. It simply isn’t done.

Consequently, PR’s DEI “emperors” have no clothes.

Whenever academic studies or polling data reveal insights as to the harm that DEI policies can render, the industry by and large shuts them down.

In sum, as the PR industry undertakes #PRethics Month in September, it’s clear that we need better-informed, balanced conversations about DEI’s legalities (and illegalities) than what the industry thus far has allowed via its “strategic gatekeeping” function.

Just look at social media – even on the “professional” LinkedIn platform – and you can see it:

DEI’s explosively divisive nature quickly unravels any honest attempts at public discourse. “You’re a racist!”  acrimony commonly jumps out from the “comments” section of posts questioning a DEI supposition, as do equally unhinged “Quit being a Nazi apologist!” finger pointing, with zero basis for such misplaced accusations toward other colleagues.

These tactics clearly intend to shut down civil conversations before they even can begin, through intimidation, coercion, and implied (or overt) threats of reputational damage, if one dares step foot outside the DEI orthodoxy’s invisible fence.

Sound “ethical”?

Unless the PR industry truly wishes for DEI’s ultimate legacy to be one of fascism and fear (which I believe is where we are now), the leading associations and industry players need to ante up with a more robust, inclusive dialogue. In so doing, the industry must finally – at long last – embrace that most elusive “Diversity” driver of them all, which is notably absent from nearly all DEI practices and PR industry DEI webinars and task forces: Diversity of thought.

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Author’s note: Mary Beth West is not an attorney and does not give legal advice. While she advocates that PR professionals read and comprehend current legal and financial data underscoring DEI’s industry performance, she also urges all leaders to consult their own organization’s legal counsel with expertise in their own nation’s laws / regulations and in other nations where their organization may do business. Civil rights laws in the U.S. may or may not reflect laws in other nations.

Editor’s note: This article reflects the personal opinion of the author; Strategic accepts submissions from authors from diverse perspectives that are relevant to communication professionals.

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Co-founder of The #PRethics Community on LinkedIn, Mary Beth West, APR, FPRCA, is a 30-year public relations industry veteran. She can be followed on X at @marybethwest.