by Daniel Johnson
April 5, 2025
The ruling represents yet another turn in the legal landscape after the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling declaring affirmative action unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge Hala Jarbou, an appointee of Donald Trump in 2020, ruled on March 26 that IBM will be required to defend itself against a racial discrimination claim from Randall Dill, a white man who claims that the company forced him out to further its efforts to build a more diverse workplace.
According to Reuters, Jarbou ruled that Dill’s claims, if true, require IBM to defend itself from the allegations that the company set specific targets for its racial and gender makeup and also offered financial incentives to Dill’s supervisors.
“Taken as true, Dill’s allegations plausibly support an inference that IBM improperly considers race or gender as a factor in employment-related decisions,” Jarbou wrote in her ruling.
Dill is represented by America First Legal, founded by Stephen Miller, a top advisor to Trump who has promoted white nationalist views.
The firm tends to focus on cases that contain arguments that DEI initiatives discriminate against white people.
Dill alleges that despite positive feedback previously, he was placed on a performance improvement plan. He alleges that the plan was impossible to complete, resulting in his firing in 2023.
He also claimed that IBM had race and sex quotas that guided hiring and promotion bonuses for executives based on those goals, which he argues gave them an incentive to push out white men.
IBM, however, countered Dill’s claims, saying that they do not use hiring quotas of any kind and maintained that Dill’s claims are baseless and exaggerated, noting that he had failed to identify any female or non-white coworkers who received the alleged preferential treatment.
According to Jarbou’s ruling, there is a plausible connection between the alleged incentive plan and Dill’s firing.
“At this stage, Dill has provided enough facts to state viable race and gender discrimination claims against IBM,” Jarbou wrote.
Although Jarbou acknowledged in her ruling that legal precedent sets forth that plaintiffs in employment discrimination litigation must show that they are members of a protected class, that they suffered adverse employment action, that they were qualified for the position, and were replaced by someone outside of the protected class, nonetheless, she ruled that Dill has presented enough facts to go forward with his case.
The ruling represents yet another turn in the legal landscape after the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling declaring affirmative action unconstitutional, which has resulted in arguments that attempt to pervert laws created to protect Black Americans and other minorities from discrimination into interpretations that work for the benefit of dubious discrimination claims from white Americans in the workplace.
According to David Glasgow, the executive director of New York University’s Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, “The goal of these organizations (like America First Legal) is to file as many lawsuits as possible, get as many cases pushed through the courts…to try to get the Supreme Court to review it and reach a decision,” Glasgow told The Guardian in 2024. “They realize it’s a 6-3 conservative supermajority Supreme Court right now, but they don’t know how long they are going to have this really friendly conservative court.”
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