(UPI) — The Federal Communications Commission Enforcement Bureau has launched an investigation into hiring practices at Disney and ABC to ensure neither is violating equal employment opportunity regulations through “DEI discrimination.”
“I want to ensure that Disney and ABC have not been violating FCC equal employee opportunity regulations by promoting invidious forms of [diversity, equity and inclusion] discrimination,” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said Thursday in a letter to Walt Disney Company Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger.
The FCC investigation is to ensure Disney and ABC have ended “any and all discriminatory initiatives in substance, not just in name,” Carr said.
He also wants to determine whether Disney’s actions complied at all times with applicable FCC regulations, even if those actions have ended.
“Disney started out a century ago as an iconic American company,” Carr said.
“For decades, Disney focused on churning out box office and programming successes,” he continued. “But then, something changed. Disney has now been embroiled in rounds of controversy surrounding its DEI policies.”
Carr said “numerous reports” suggest Disney’s leaders “went all-in on insidious forms of DEI discrimination” in a manner that “infected” the company’s decision making.
The Communications Act and FCC rules prohibit entities like Disney and ABC from discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, age or gender, Carr wrote.
“I am concerned that ABC and its parent company have been or may still be promoting invidious formed of DEI in a manner that does not comply with FCC regulations,” he said.
Carr said Disney in recent years prioritized DEI and “embedded explicit race- and gender-based criteria across its operations.”
Such practices include implementing “racially segregated affinity groups and spaces” and launching Disney’s “Reimagine Tomorrow” initiative that Carr called a “mechanism for advancing its DEI mission.”
Carr also accuses ABC of imposing mandatory “inclusion standards” that require half of all regular and recurring characters to depict underrepresented groups and at least half of all writers, directors, crew and vendors be hired based on group identity.
“It appears that executive bonuses may also have been tied to DEI ‘performance,’ and ABC has utilized race-based hiring databases and restricted fellowships to select demographic groups,” Carr wrote.
He said it is unclear if Disney and ABC have fundamentally changed their recent DEI-driven policies and if their past practices violated FCC regulations.
Disney officials are reviewing Carr’s letter, according to a prepared statement shared with the BBC.
“We look forward to engaging with the commission to answer its questions,” the statement said.
ABC officials did not respond to a UPI request for comment on Saturday afternoon.
The Trump administration has banned DEI practices within the federal government and is opposing discrimination among U.S. employers.
