Communications Daily is a service of Warren Communications News.
Not 'Particularly Rational'

FCBA Panel: DEI Policy Shift Likely Signals Backslide for Telecom Diversity

A White House executive order on diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) programs could lead to telecom companies abandoning such efforts, causing a rollback of progress on diversity, said industry executives and public interest attorneys during a FCBA panel discussion Tuesday. There is “fear and chaos” in “lots of corridors and hallways of corporate America” over the DEI executive order and anticipation of future White House action in that vein, said Clint Odom, T-Mobile vice president-strategic alliances and external affairs and a former FCC aide. “The world seems to be lining up between the companies that are doing DEI and the companies that are retreating from it.”

Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article

Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!

The recent White House executive order concerned federal agencies only, and a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision undoing affirmative action legally applied only to public education, but those shifts affect DEI programs at private companies, panelists said. “Companies are often risk-averse,” noted Brent Wilkes, Hispanic Federation senior vice president-institutional development. “And so they've unfortunately started to unwind a lot of their [DEI] programs, even while they remain in a non-diverse status." Wilkes pointed to a recent letter from 19 state attorneys general to Costco, urging that it cease DEI hiring practices, as an example of the pressure telecom companies could face.

Telecom is different from the rest of the labor market because the industry relies on FCC-granted licenses, Odom said. “Are we at the point where the government could punish a private company for engaging in lawful conduct?” he asked. “Could it, for instance, grant or withhold a permit or any kind of approval based on a requirement that a company eliminate lawful activity?” The FCC has a history of bipartisan support for diversity efforts no matter what party controlled the White House, Odom said.

However, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr may not enjoy the same latitude to run the agency that those past chairs did, said Deborah Lathen, a former chief of the FCC’s Cable Services Bureau. For instance, she mentioned the withdrawal of then-FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly's nomination by the previous Trump White House after he spoke against the administration’s stance on Section 230. “Carr is going to walk a very, very difficult line here between what is required of him by law, for the FCC, and what is dictated to him from the White House,” Lathen said. “I don't think we can expect particularly rational decisions to be coming out of the FCC.” Odom added that it's “still a little early in the game to see what’s permitted and what is not.”

Odom said FCC work to help small business and other agency efforts could be unintended victims of the current administration’s crusade against DEI. The FCC hasn’t responded to repeated inquiries about whether White House orders to shutter DEI offices and place DEI-focused positions on leave will affect agency departments such as the Office of Workplace Diversity and the Office of Communications Business Opportunities. Former Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council CEO Maurita Coley Flippin, who moderated one of the FCBA panels, said she was “rankled” by the language of the DEI executive order and the dissolution of the FCC’s Council for Equity and Diversity, on which she served.

The current backlash against DEI policies that were widely supported only a few years ago is reminiscent of the post-U.S. Civil War Reconstruction period, Lathen said. Odom made a similar comparison: If it becomes an accepted view that efforts to foster inclusion are comparable to historically racist policies such as segregation, “there’s not much left” to logically defend policies such as the Voting Rights Act or the Civil Rights Act, he said. “If people who are of goodwill and good conscience are trying to work on ensuring opportunity for a lot of people, if those people are being called racists and bigots, then this whole thing is over.”