Tech giant IBM fired a white male employee to meet its illegal racial and sex quotas last year, according to a federal lawsuit, marking the latest legal battle involving the company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
America First Legal alleged in its lawsuit, filed Tuesday, that IBM terminated the conservative law firm’s client because he did not meet the company’s DEI standards, even though he was a stellar employee. In doing so, IBM violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race and sex, and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the first federal law to establish that all citizens are equally protected under the law.
The newly filed litigation marks the second legal effort spearheaded by AFL against IBM. AFL sued the tech company on behalf of a separate client in May, alleging that IBM subsidiary Red Hat fired a longtime employee because he was a white man.
The latest lawsuit states that, in June 2023, IBM placed Randall Dill on its Performance Improvement Plan, a “pretextual, vague, and unmeasurable” metric that had nothing to do with his job description or job functions. Dill was fired in October 2023 for being a white man — a “double whammy,” as AFL put it. Described as an “outstanding” employee, he worked at IBM for seven years.
“Mr. Dill has suffered reputational harm and embarrassment for being labeled a poor performer when he was terminated because of his skin color and for being a man,” the court document says.
Dill tried requesting meetings with IBM’s Human Resources department to determine the reasoning behind his termination, but his requests were left stonewalled or unanswered. He filed a discrimination charge against IBM with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last month.
A spokesman for IBM denied the allegations of discrimination, saying race or gender played no part in Dill’s termination.
“These allegations are baseless, as neither race nor gender played any role in the decision to end this individual’s employment with IBM. Discrimination of any kind has absolutely no place at IBM, we do not use hiring quotas and never have,” the spokesperson told National Review without elaborating why Dill was fired. A request for clarification has so far gone unanswered.
“Mr. Dill’s termination was not performance related,” the lawsuit states. Rather, it arose out of the corporation’s newfound commitment to representation and diversity within the workplace.
IBM executives discussed their discriminatory policies in a secretly recorded 2021 corporate town-hall meeting. During the meeting, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna and Red Hat CEO Paul Cormier bragged about firing executives and taking away their bonuses if they did not do enough to advance the organization’s discriminatory employment goals. Those who did advance the racial and sex quotas were financially rewarded.
“All executives in the company have to move forward by 1 percent on both underrepresented minorities . . . and gender. You’ve got to move both forward by a percentage,” Krishna said on the video call. “That leads to a plus on [their] bonus. By the way, if you lose, you lose part of your bonus.”
Footage of the corporate meeting was leaked in December 2023 by undercover journalist James O’Keefe and drew the attention of AFL.
“The quota system is tied to bonus compensation in such a way that it incentivized impermissible racial discrimination and disincentivizes refusal to engage in such discrimination,” the new lawsuit states.
AFL filed the federal lawsuit in Michigan, the state in which Dill resides and previously worked at IBM.
It follows a similar lawsuit led by Missouri attorney general Andrew Bailey, who alleged in June that IBM violated the Missouri Human Rights Act due to its employment quotas and annual “diversity modifier” system. The internal standard requires the corporation to meet certain quotas per year based on race, color, national origin, sex, or ancestry.
Tuesday’s lawsuit demands a trial by jury on three counts, two of which violated Title VII and the third violated the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Dill seeks compensatory damages, including back pay and punitive damages, for the stress that IBM caused him.
The plaintiff was unemployed for eight months before he found a lower-paying job in June. He suffered “lost wages, embarrassment, economic and financial damages, and considerable stress and emotional damages” in the months after his termination from IBM, according to the suit.
“Employers across the United States should make employment decisions based solely on merit — not immutable characteristics that individual Americans cannot control,” said AFL executive director Gene Hamilton. “No one should be discriminated against based on their race or sex, and we are committed to vindicating our client’s rights in court.”