US sues The New York Times, claiming discrimination against a white man
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against The New York Times on Tuesday, claiming that the paper had engaged in “unlawful employment practices” and had discriminated against a white male employee who did not get a sought-after promotion.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, says that the Times’ “stated race and sex-based representation goals influenced the decision not to advance” the man’s candidacy for a deputy real estate editor role in 2025.
The lawsuit followed a rapid escalation of an investigation that began last year when an employee filed a complaint with the EEOC in New York. The lawsuit indicates that the employee, who is not named, had worked at the paper as an editor since 2014 and applied for the deputy editor job in 2025.
The complaint quotes from Times diversity and inclusion reports in recent years, including a 2021 “Call to Action” that set a goal of increasing the number of Black and Latino employees.
The reports “detailed NYT’s express efforts to make employment decisions on the basis of race and sex to achieve its desired demographic goals,” the complaint says. “A decrease in the percentage of White male employees (whether new hires, existing employees, or those in leadership, as appropriate) was a necessary consequence for the NYT to achieve these results.”
The complaint also quotes from exchanges on the messaging platform Slack among newsroom leaders about trends in diversity hiring, and from internal correspondence related to the hiring process of the deputy editor role.
According to the complaint, the complainant was interviewed for the job but was not selected for a panel interview.
“The four candidates advanced to the panel interview stage matched the race and/or sex characteristics NYT sought to increase in its leadership,” the complaint says. According to the complaint, the final pool of candidates consisted of “a white woman, a Black man, an Asian female and a multiracial female.”
The complaint asserts that the white man was more qualified than the person who ultimately got the job.
The EEOC is responsible for enforcing federal civil rights laws in the workplace. Under the second Trump administration, its Republican chair, Andrea Lucas, has recast the agency as an executor of President Donald Trump’s agenda. She has pressed staff to pursue cases aligned with the administration’s political priorities, including taking aim at diversity programs that she has said discriminate against white men.
This has often been expressed as legal action against institutions that Trump has identified as hostile, including universities, media organizations and Nike.
After a monthslong investigation of the Times, the EEOC engaged the company in early April in “conciliation,” a process of voluntary, brokered mediation, according to a person who had been briefed on the investigation but was not able to discuss it publicly.
On April 21, the agency cut off the process and said it was referring the matter for possible legal action, the person said. The complaint says that the Times did not offer a solution that the commission would accept.
Trump and his administration have used the regulatory tools of the federal government to hound and, in some cases, extract financial penalties from media organizations it has taken aim at. Last week, regulators ordered a review of station licenses owned by ABC, saying it was prompted by an investigation into the network’s diversity and inclusion policies.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Copyright 2026 The New York Times Company
This story was originally published May 5, 2026 at 2:56 PM.