Women's group to sue Secret Service over 'discriminatory' DEI quotas

A women’s group plans on suing the United States Secret Service (USSS) over what it describes as an “arbitrary” diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) policy that they say is deleterious to female employees.

"In our country, it is illegal for the government to discriminate on the basis of sex. That is the Constitution's 14th Amendment," May Mailman, director of the group's Independent Women's Law Center, told Fox News. "But also Title VII prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of sex. And yet you have the Secret Service, of all agencies, saying that they want to have a 30 percent female quota." A Secret Service spokesperson told Fox News that the agency does not comment on matters before the courts.

The Independent Women's Forum (IWF) lawsuit after some questioned the physical competence of female USSS agents who were standing beside former President Donald Trump when gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks carried out the assassination attempt in Butler, PA on July 13.

Mailman noted the existence of a "30x30" pledge that a host of law enforcement agencies subscribe to. It sets out an objective of reaching a workforce that is 30 percent female by the year 2030. "And we know that Kim Cheatle took this very seriously. We know that she made hiring decisions based on this," Mailman said.

In 2022, President Biden appointed Cheatle as USSS director. She resigned following a grilling from Congress in the wake of the attempt that revealed the USSS exhibited gross incompetence during the rally. She was only the second woman in charge of the service.

Before that, she was the senior director of global security for PepsiCo. Critics say Cheatle was focused on implementing DEI ideology at the USSS instead of only focusing on hiring the best for the agency.

Female members constitute 24 percent of USSS agents, as the agency's website states. The Diplomatic Security Service, run under the auspices of the State Department and not the Department of Homeland Security as is the USSS – is also committed to the 30x30 plan to augment women within its ranks.

Mailman told Fox that there are three reasons the IWF opposes the 30 percent quota. The first is that "it's illegal, and you shouldn't discriminate on the basis of sex," she said. The second reason is that "it's particularly dangerous in the Secret Service" to hire strictly on the basis of gender instead of hiring the best man or woman for the job, based on their abilities and training. Third, Mailman, noted, "it's particularly harmful to women” because when they are hired, some will assume they got the job strictly on the basis of their sex – as an equity hire.

"I am sure it is not easy to be a woman in any male-dominated field, including the Secret Service. But as we all remember, when the pictures of that day came out, it was immediately like these women are all cops, and they can't find their holster," Mailman explained. "All of the blame seems to be on women, including Kim Cheatle, all the way down. That's what happens when you have quota systems ... you turn women into tokens. That makes it really hard for women who are trying to be respected and earn their way into male-dominated fields."