IBM Must Prove White Man Wasn’t Fired for Diversity Reasons

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 themselves against a racial discrimination claim from Randall Dill, a white man, who claims that he was forced out by the company in order 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 the racial and gender makeup of the company and also offered financial incentives for 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 he was placed on a performance improvement plan despite positive feedback previously, and the plan, he alleges, 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 the firing of Dill.

“At this stage, Dill has provided enough facts to state viable race and gender discrimination claims against IBM,” Jarbou wrote.

Although in her ruling Jarbou acknowledged that legal precedence sets forth that plaintiffs in employment discrimination litigation must show that they are a member 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 originally created to protect Black Americans 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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