Abstract

Excerpted From: Nicole Buonocore Porter, #MeToo vs. Anti-DEI, 72 Wayne L. Rev. 157 (Summer 2026) (Full Document)

The #MeToo movement has lost some steam since 2017 but is still relevant. In its heyday, it was responsible for removing hundreds of high-power men in media, entertainment, along with CEOs of many other industries. The movement was also responsible for changing the way we talk about harassment and importantly, for the way we listen to and believe the victims of harassment.

A new movement appears to have taken the place of #MeToo--the attack on DEI initiatives. Anyone paying attention undoubtedly is aware of the recent attack on DEI. Although this attack has been brewing for a few years, it came to a head when President Trump took office for his second term in 2025 and immediately signed Executive Orders aimed at eliminating DEI efforts in both public and private workplaces.

This article explores where these two movements intersect and how they conflict. In doing so, this article makes two contributions. First, it demonstrates that the attack on DEI appears to be working, with several employers eliminating, changing, or dismantling their DEI programs. Second, it argues that the dismantling of DEI programs has several negative consequences for the goal of minimizing harassment in the workplace.

This article proceeds in four additional parts. Part II briefly discusses the #MeToo movement and the attack on DEI. Part III hypothesizes that DEI efforts will decrease dramatically in the coming years, for one (or both) of two reasons. First, there has been an increase in majority plaintiffs (such as white, straight, Christian men) claiming that their employers’ DEI programs constituted discrimination, harassment, or both based on their protected classes. Second, many employers have succumbed (and will continue to succumb) to pressure from the Trump Administration to dismantle their DEI programs.

Part IV discusses how the anti-DEI movement threatens to halt the progress of the #MeToo movement. Specifically, this Part discusses the negative effects that flow from eliminating DEI initiatives. First, harassment worsens in places that lack diversity--so assuming the lack of DEI programming leads to less diversity in an organization, it is likely harassment will increase. Second, eliminating DEI will fail to get at the root of the problem of harassment--which is power differentials, not sexual desire. Third, eliminating DEI programming very well might lead to less reporting of harassing behavior; the elimination of those offices might send the signal to targets of harassment that there is not a safe place to report. Finally, if employers eliminate all DEI initiatives except training that only or mostly addresses sexual harassment, we run the risk of stigmatizing women (who are seen as the main victims of harassment and therefore the main beneficiaries of anti-harassment training). This is an especially pernicious problem in the situation where women depend on mentoring from men to be able to succeed in the workplace, because research has demonstrated that one way men dealt with the #MeToo movement was by avoiding mentoring female colleagues. Part IV concludes with a brief response to the anticipated criticism of this paper--why should we care about training at all given that there is little to no evidence that it is effective?

Finally, Part V offers some brief suggestions on where we go from here. How do we resolve this problem of the anti-DEI movement threatening to reverse the gains that were made because of the #MeToo movement?

If this article is correct--that the anti-DEI movement is going to cause workplace harassment to worsen--the next question is what can and should we do to counter the attack on DEI. For those of us who believe that DEI work is important (if done thoughtfully and legally), it’s tempting to simply wait until we have a Democratic president again. Of course, it’s possible that a new Republican president will not be as hostile to DEI as Trump, especially because it would be difficult to be more hostile. However, in today’s polarized country, I would not bet on that. Moreover, even with a Democratic president, DEI could continue to be attacked by the public and the courts. In fact, a March 2025 “survey found that a slightly higher share of voters had negative versus positive feelings on DEI.” So the wait-and-see approach may not be the best one.

Instead, the focus should turn to getting people to understand what DEI is so that they do not villainize it. As noted above, and as I have explained in more detail elsewhere, DEI is grossly misunderstood. Most of what falls under the DEI umbrella are sensible, if not necessary, practices to avoid discrimination or harassment liability, and to retain valuable employees by making sure that they are mentored, valued, and included.

More importantly, the message needs to get out that DEI does not harm the majority. It is true that some DEI practices are specifically directed at minority employees (whether that is defined by race, sex, disability, LGBTQ status, etc.), but that is because research reveals that those employees have been left out of mentoring networks and workplace dynamics, which makes them feel unwelcome and undervalued. Moreover, many DEI efforts, if done well, are helping to ensure that the employer is not vulnerable to liability, which does not harm the majority. For instance, consider pay audits, which will reveal if there are inequities in pay that could lead to a pay discrimination lawsuit, or climate surveys, which might reveal that there are some bad actors that might increase the likelihood of a harassment lawsuit. As previously explained, employers have been doing much of this work for decades, long before the DEI moniker became popular.

In addition to (or maybe instead of) trying to convince people that DEI is not what they think it is, a “rebranding [might be] in order.” And certainly plenty of employers are doing the same work but are not publicizing it, and others are using different language to describe what we recently would have called DEI. Many DEI efforts in recent years were somewhat performative, especially at the height of the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements. Accordingly, employers could still do much of the same important work without attracting the hostility of DEI critics, such as the federal government under the current administration.

But if there is one critique of DEI that might have merit, it is the critique against some efforts at diversity hiring. As I have argued elsewhere, efforts at increasing diversity do not usually mean that an employer is engaging in quota hiring. Despite the Supreme Court’s approval of some affirmative action efforts by private employers, strict quota hiring has always been unlawful. To be clear, many efforts that fall into the diversity bucket are not only lawful, but make good business sense. This includes efforts to make sure that explicit or implicit biases do not seep into the hiring process, and that hiring practices (such as where a company posts job openings or what qualifications they require) do not inadvertently create disparate impact liability. It is also possible to care about diversity and keep track of diversity without engaging in quota hiring or violating the law in any way. But some employers had diversity targets that very well might have violated the law. As one DEI professional put it: “My hot take is that we haven’t done diversity well.” Additionally, diversity is the “most controversial” of the DEI components. If we recognize that some diversity efforts come close to unlawful affirmative action, while many others are simply compliance efforts to avoid discrimination liability, the solution might be to lean away from emphasizing diversity, and focus instead on the equity and inclusion parts of DEI. As stated elsewhere in this article, if a DEI office was referred to as the “anti-discrimination compliance committee,” it is doubtful that DEI would be reviled as much as it currently is.

Finally, although this is not my original idea, I agree with Widiss and others that one step employers might take in these anti-DEI times is to make harassment trainings focus more on general civility in the workplace, rather than emphasizing harassment based on protected classes. As the EEOC Task Force reported, incivility is often a precursor to workplace harassment, so promoting civility and respect in a workplace might “prevent [] conduct from rising to the level of unlawful harassment.” As the EEOC stated:

The beauty of workplace civility training is that it is focused on the positive--what employees and managers should do, rather than on what they should not do. In addition, by appealing to all individuals in the workplace, regardless of social identity or perceived proclivity to harass, civility training might avoid some of the resistance met by interventions exclusively targeting harassment.

Of course, although civility training might help improve the culture of a workplace to some extent, while concomitantly decreasing harassment in the workplace, it alone cannot take the place of other DEI efforts, such as making sure promotions and pay raises are equitable, or making sure that employees with disabilities or those who are of minority religions feel included and welcome in the workplace. But it is a good start, and one that might alleviate some of the special treatment stigma that might arise from harassment training that focuses primarily on sexual harassment.

Nicole Buonocore Porter is the Rita Anne Rollins Professor of Law at William & Mary Law School.