IBM’s Red Hat Sued by Stephen Miller’s Legal Group for Anti-White Male Bias

(Bloomberg Law) -- Ex-Trump adviser Stephen Miller’s legal group has sued IBM Corp. subsidiary Red Hat Inc. claiming the company’s diversity goals led to the discriminatory treatment and termination of a former White male employee.

In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in the US District Court for the District of Idaho, America First Legal said that Allan Kingsley Wood, a former senior director at Red Hat, faced race and gender discrimination because of the IBM subsidary’s diversity, equity, and inclusion program, which involved setting hiring goals for women and minorities.

AFL has filed several lawsuits over corporate DEI-related issues. But the conservative group has more frequently brought its complaints directly to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, submitting over 30 requests for the civil rights agency to investigate high profile corporations’ DEI programs for bias, including one targeting IBM’s diversity work.

The EEOC has yet to respond publicly to the group’s letters, which generally claim companies’ DEI efforts discriminate against White and male employees in violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Conservative groups have increasingly launched legal attacks on corporate DEI following the US Supreme Court’s June 2023 decision curtailing affirmative action in college admissions. Suits have claimed that hiring and recruitment decisions made around both full-time jobs and fellowships at large companies are biased against White workers, but have gained only limited traction in federal courts.

Red Hat in 2021 began implementing new diversity requirements, hiring a chief executive officer of DEI to lead these efforts, Wednesday’s suit said. AFL claims the company said its DEI initiatives would impact hiring decisions.

Wood vocalized his opposition to the company’s DEI policies because of his religious, personal and political views “and continuously advocated for hiring based on merit and skill rather than other immutable characteristics,” AFL said in its complaint.

The conservative legal group said Red Hat announced DEI goals that involved “quotas”, aiming “to remake its workforce demographic, seeking to reach 30% women globally and 30% associates of color in the United States by 2028.”

Two weeks later, Wood was told his role was being eliminated along with 21 other employees, the vast majority of whom were also both White and male, the lawsuit said.

The complaint also said that Wood was retaliated against for expressing his beliefs, by cutting short his approved leave under the Family Medical Leave Act to terminate his employment.

In its letter to the EEOC in December 2023 and a letter to IBM’s board of directors, Miller’s group cited video footage of IBM’s CEO Arvind Krishna and Red Hat CEO Paul Cormier discussing diversity. Krishna says in the video that corporate executives’ bonuses can be affected if they don’t meet DEI goals.

Wood is seeking compensation as well as an injunction against Red Hat’s DEI program.

Red Hat didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

To contact the reporter on this story: Riddhi Setty in Washington at rsetty@bloombergindustry.com

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rebekah Mintzer at rmintzer@bloombergindustry.com; Genevieve Douglas at gdouglas@bloomberglaw.com

(Updated to add request made to Red Hat for comment on the suit.)

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