A U.S. District Judge in Lansing, Michigan, has ruled in favor of a white ex-IBM employee to allow a racial and gender discrimination lawsuit to proceed. Judge Hala Jarbou, a Trump appointee, said the plaintiff, Randall Dill, had provided sufficient grounds to sustain the case.
Dill alleges that he was terminated from his position to accommodate more employees from minority backgrounds to attain the company’s diversity goals.
The lawsuit stated that IBM’s CEO and Board Chairman, Arvind Krishna, allegedly directed all executives “to move forward by 1% on both underrepresented minorities.” His objective was to have female employees account for 50% of the workforce and increase the percentage of Black employees to 13% and Hispanics to the “mid-teens.”
IBM executives, including Dill’s immediate supervisor, Zook, and Kevin Henning, Zook’s supervisor, stood to gain financially from achieving DEI goals or lose their bonuses or even employment on failure.
According to the lawsuit, the “quota system is tied to bonus compensation in such a way that it incentivizes impermissible racial discrimination and disincentivizes refusal to engage in such discrimination.”
Dill says his supervisors used various ploys to terminate his employment to achieve diversity goals by increasing the percentage of minority employees.
He claims that, despite his clients rating him highly, he was put on a performance improvement program typically reserved for underperforming employees. The program was based on a client rating system with an average score of 8 out of 10 considered satisfactory. Dill’s clients frequently rated him no less than 9 out of 10.
Yet, his supervisors blamed him for a “low-utilization rate” and failing to enroll more clients, which was beyond his control “as he could not control whether IBM signed a new client or whether one of its existing clients chose Dill as its consultant.” His situation was also not unusual, as half of the employees in his division were on the bench.
“Dill alleges grounds for believing that his managers were, in fact, motivated by improper reasons. He alleges that they had financial incentives to terminate a white male employee like himself in order to alter the racial and gender composition of his division in accordance with IBM’s Diversity Policy,” the lawsuit states.
However, IBM denied the allegations and requested the judge to dismiss the case for failure to state a claim, arguing that Dill had failed to identify other employees in similar situations who were treated differently.
Nonetheless, the court denied IBM’s motion for dismissal, stating that “Dill has provided enough facts to state viable race and gender discrimination claims against IBM.”
“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 stated.
However, IBM publicly denied the allegations, terming them as baseless.
“These allegations are baseless, as neither race nor gender played any role in the decision to end this individual’s employment with IBM,” the company said.
Dill is represented by America First Legal, founded by the former senior advisor to President Trump, Stephen Miller.
“We look forward to continuing to litigate this case and fight for justice on behalf of our client,” said America First Legal’s attorney, Andrew Block.
