Dallas Mavericks Owner Mark Cuban earned a sharp rebuke from a commissioner for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on his misconceptions about how DEI works in conjunction with federal employment rules.

Cuban has been raising eyebrows for the better part of the last two weeks for his loud and proud support of the far-left ideals of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies in the world of business and for his insistence that DEI policies are not really race-based ideals.

He has had confrontations on social media with a host of people, including X chief Elon Musk, who pointedly maintained that DEI is nothing but legalized “racism.”

But Cuban has persisted in standing up for the left-wing hiring policies despite repeatedly losing the battle on the points. Last weekend, he was at it again in reply to an X account called “The Rabbit Hole” when he insisted that he uses DEI policies to make race and gender “part of the equation” for hiring new employees.

“I’ve never hired anyone based exclusively on race, gender, religion. I only ever hire the person that will put my business in the best position to succeed,” he added, “And yes, race and gender can be part of the equation. I view diversity as a competitive advantage.”

But this claim that he includes gender and race as one of his criteria for hiring brought a commissioner for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to jump in to warn him that he is actually breaking federal employment laws if he really is basing hires — even in part — on race and gender.

EEOC Commissioner Andrea R. Lucas jumped into the X conversation to warn Cuban that he is “dead wrong” on his contention.

“EEOC Commissioner here,” she said in her Jan. 29 post to Cuban. “Unfortunately, you’re dead wrong on black-letter Title VII law. As a general rule, race/sex can’t even be a ‘motivating factor’—nor a plus factor, tie-breaker, or tipping point. It’s important employers understand the ground rules here.”

Lucas later joined Fox Business Network to explain the law further.

“If any employer, whether private or public, uses race or sex or any other protected characteristic, particularly race or sex, as any factor in their decision-making process for any employment decision, then they’ve violated Title VII, and an employee that’s been harmed can file a complaint with the EEOC and then if they get a right to sue letter, they can file in federal court,” Lucas told the network.

“A goal, per se, is not prohibited,” Lucas added. “But there’s lots of ways that you can end up violating the law or having it be used as evidence of violating the law if it indicates that you’re using race or sex or another protected characteristic as a factor in your decision making. Quotas absolutely are a direct violation of Title VII, so if you are indicating that goal really is an actual requirement or a hard target, that you will be hiring this amount of people or you will be promoting this amount of people, that’s absolutely a facial violation of Title VII.”

“So a lot of people hear the words diversity, equity, and inclusion and think, well, all of those sound like great concepts,” she said. “I like fairness. Who doesn’t like fairness? I like equality. What’s wrong with equity? But the reason that there’s been a shift from focusing on equal employment opportunity to equity is for a reason. Words mean something, and equity and equality are not the same concept.”

Still, it seems that even Cuban’s own team CEO has admitted to breaking employment law by basing her hiring solely on race and gender.

Mavericks CEO Cynt Marshall is seen in a video from 2020 admitting that she fired white males simply because they were white males and hired women and minorities just because she wanted “diversity” in the company.

Marshall’s admission is a direct refutation of Cuban’s claim that his DEI hiring policies are not really race-based and exclusionary.

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