Just hours after Mayor Zohran Mamdani released a long overdue and legally mandated plan to eliminate racial inequity in New York City government, the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Justice Department weighed in on social media.
“Sounds fishy/illegal,” Harmeet Dhillon wrote on X on Monday. “Will review!”
The 375-page Racial Equity Plan included examples of how city agencies are developing goals and measures to address longstanding inequities. But the Mamdani administration also took care to avoid using the term “diversity, equity and inclusion” in the report, fearing it would antagonize Trump officials.
Officials from the Mamdani administration had expected there might be potential federal blowback to the report. In preparation, they did not restore references to “diversity, equity and inclusion” that had been eliminated in the draft that the Mamdani administration had inherited from his predecessor, Eric Adams, according to two people familiar with the draft reports.
The language, according to two people familiar with the edited drafts, was removed or toned down to conform to wording that had been upheld in the courts. The goal was to describe diversity, equity and inclusion, but in a way that is permissible under the law to avoid being challenged by the Trump administration, both people said.
News of the changes to the final preliminary report was first reported by City & State.
Asked why references to diversity, equity and inclusion had been removed, Mr. Mamdani said on Tuesday that his administration had inherited a plan that had been kept under wraps by his predecessor, Eric Adams. The mayor said that Mr. Adams had refused to release the report, adding that it “had been heavily diluted over many rounds of revisions.”
“We put forward a stronger report that actually reflects the realities New Yorkers are living through,” Mr. Mamdani said at an unrelated news conference. He did not elaborate on his administration’s role in the changes.
The two people familiar with the draft process said the changes had included things such as using data broken down by race, sex and gender to buttress the inequities being described in the report.
But some things that had been removed were restored, including a definition of racism. Language was added to characterize the death of George Floyd — an event that led to large protests in New York City and elsewhere — as a murder.
Mr. Adams was sued by the independent Commission on Racial Equity for not releasing the plan in 2024, as required by revisions to the City Charter that were approved in a voter referendum. In January, Mr. Mamdani pledged to release the preliminary draft during his first 100 days in office.
Linda Tigani, the chairwoman and executive director of the commission, said she was “extremely disappointed” to learn that certain language had been removed from the plan.
“The voters wanted explicit language,” Ms. Tigani said. “They wanted clear, actionable goals that named race, that named racial inequities and that named solutions.”
Although Mr. Mamdani has released the plan, the commission’s lawsuit is still in progress, and arguments were heard in court on Tuesday. The city asked that the lawsuit be dismissed, and lawyers for the commission argued that it was important to keep the case active to ensure that the city releases the final racial equity plan in a timely manner.
The Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment. Under President Trump’s direction, its civil rights division has pursued claims of “reverse discrimination,” withholding funds from institutions where federal officials believe D.E.I. initiatives have caused white people to suffer discrimination.
Joe Calvello, Mr. Mamdani’s spokesman, said in a statement that the city had yet to receive any notifications from the Department of Justice about the plan.
Mr. Mamdani released the racial equity plan along with a report on the true cost of living as part of an effort to more closely link his affordability agenda to racial equity.
“The mayor was very clear that different communities have inherited this affordability crisis and have been impacted in different ways,” said Afua Atta-Mensah, the chief equity officer and commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Equity and Racial Justice. “To solve for that, we have to be clear about where it comes from, which we go through in the plan, and be clear about the policies we will use to ensure that New Yorkers can live a good life.”
Among the diverse goals in the preliminary plan are efforts to refer more families to preventive programs to limit involvement with the Administration for Children’s Services; ensuring that every New Yorker has access to a primary care doctor by 2034 to reduce health disparities; and the collection of data in the Sanitation Department to identify and improve service to historically underserved neighborhoods.
Ms. Tigani said that she understood Mr. Mamdani’s general approach to trying to avoid conflict with Mr. Trump, using a mix of charm and flattery to facilitate an unlikely relationship between two men who are on opposite ends of the political spectrum. But she believed that the mayor’s deference to the president in this instance would hurt New Yorkers.
“While I understand that Trump’s orders and his political agenda may be taken as a matter of law, in New York City, what is law is racial equity,” she said. “And that comes first and foremost.”
Dana Rubinstein contributed reporting.
Jeffery C. Mays is a Times reporter covering politics with a focus on New York City Hall.
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