The Minnesota executive branch didn't need another scandal; they're still dealing with its Department of Human Services being one of (an admittedly large number of) the centers of government fraud in a state once famous for "good government", and its Department of Education - still embroiled in largest Covid aid fraud scandal in the country - is sweeping up the mess after having apparently having hired a convicted sex offender with apparently fuzzy immigration status as a director for one of its auditing programs.
It doesn't need another. But it's got another.
The Department of Human Services now needs to justify hiring non-"underrepresented" candidates for positions where under-represented populations are, er, under-represented:
NEW: “hiring justification” policy at DHS goes into effect next month.
— Liz Collin (@lizcollin) July 8, 2025
“Hiring supervisors must provide a hiring justification when seeking to hire a non-underrepresented candidate… prior to an offer of employment being made.” pic.twitter.com/vAntCANfg5
The new law goes into effect on August 12, and essentially piles on a load of new paperwork for hiring managers at the DHS:
"Hiring supervisors must provide a hiring justification when seeking to hire a non-underrepresented candidate when hiring for a vacancy in a job category with underrepresentation," the policy states.
"Hiring justifications must be submitted to and approved by DHS Equal Opportunity and Access Division (EOAD) prior to an offer of employment being made."
The law requires hiring managers to submit justifications including "objective reasoning" for hiring "non-underrepresented" candidates and have the bureaucracy approve it before making an offer; it also sets a quota on the number of "underrepresented" candidates who must be interviewed.
The state helpfully lists the hoops through which the hiring manager must jump to hire - let's be honest - a white male.
Human Resources plays a role:
A. Human Resources:
1. will make a good-faith effort to drive diverse applicants to the vacancy posting through targeted
recruitment;
2. determines if the vacancy is in a job category with underrepresentation before providing the
hiring supervisor with a list of candidates who have met minimum qualifications;
3. informs the hiring supervisor whether any candidates are members of the underrepresented
group(s) if the vacancy is in a job category with underrepresentation. This information should be
noted on the list of qualified candidates but must not indicate candidates’ specific protected
group(s);
And hiring managers have some new jobs to do:
B. Hiring supervisor:
1. cannot make an offer of employment to a non-underrepresented candidate for vacancies in job
categories with underrepresentation, before a hiring justification is approved by DHS Equal
Opportunity and Access Division (EOAD). Failure to follow practices below may result in a delay in
hiring justification approval, or denial of justification;
2. must offer interviews to at least three (3) underrepresented candidates if the interview pool
contains three (3) or more underrepresented candidates, offering more than three (3)
underrepresented candidates interviews, as time constraints allow
And of course, there's more paperwork involved.
And the "Affirmative Action officer" is on the case as well:
C. Affirmative action officer or designee:
1. requests additional information, as needed, from the Human Resources representative or the
hiring supervisor to approve or deny the hiring justification;
2. approves or denies the hiring justifications based on posted qualifications and objective
standards;
3. returns the hiring justification decision to the hiring supervisor and assigned Human Resources
representative
And much more.
Now, I'm not an expert on civil rights law, much less government hiring practices, but I'm not seeing how making an applicant's race, or membership in a race, a primary "knock-out" characteristic in a hiring decision doesn't trigger hordes of lawyers to descend on the Minnesota state capitol like a swarm of angry Cossacks; I'm no expert, but if this doesn't violate a stack of anti-discrimination laws, starting with the 14th Amendment and working its way all the way down, I'm at a loss to guess what does.
