On March 19, 2025, the Administration issued a new presidential memorandum expanding Administration anti-DEI efforts to the Foreign Service.
Efforts by the Administration to target DEI programs in the federal service have been previously analyzed in this blog. The new memorandum extends this policy to foreign service employees, at all the primary agencies where foreign service employees are found. The terms of the memorandum extend to all categories of foreign service employees, including foreign service officers, foreign service nationals, and others who hold a foreign service appointment.
Under the memorandum, any DEI criteria in employees’ tenure and promotion criteria are to be abolished. The heads of all affected agencies (Department of State, Department of Commerce, Department of Agriculture, as well as any remaining employees at USAID and the Agency for Global Media) were directed order all of their employees (Foreign Service or otherwise) to not consider race, color, religion, sex or national origin in “recruitment, hiring, promotion or retention decisions” for Foreign Service positions. Notably, the same agency heads are also required to direct all of their employees (Foreign Service or otherwise) to not “promote, advocate for, or otherwise inculcate support for discriminatory equity ideology” when acting in their official capacity. Although not directly referenced in the memorandum, this appears possibly to dovetail with the consistency-of-messaging rules implemented by another recent executive order, previously analyzed in this blog. The heads of the affected agencies were also directed to take disciplinary action against foreign service officers who “knowingly and willfully engaged in unconstitutional or otherwise illegal discrimination based upon race or other protected characteristics, including actions motivated by discriminatory equity ideology.”
If you are a foreign service employee and wish to learn more about your legal rights, consider contacting Gilbert Employment Law to request an initial consultation.