Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Tuesday sued The New York Times Co. for alleged race and sex discrimination against a White male worker in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, according a news release issued by the agency.
- The news publishing company allegedly excluded a longtime New York Times editor, a White man with experience in real estate journalism, from final panel interviews for an open deputy real estate editor position in early 2025. Every candidate in the final interview process was not a White male, EEOC alleged, and the final pick was an outside hire — a non-White woman with allegedly little real estate journalism experience (EEOC v. The New York Times Co.).
- “No one is above the law — including ‘elite’ institutions. There is no such thing as ‘reverse discrimination’; all race or sex discrimination is equally unlawful, according to long-established civil rights principles,” EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas said in a statement.
Dive Insight:
The lawsuit is one of a handful filed by President Donald Trump and his administration against the NYT. The newspaper company also sued the Defense Department in December 2025 and was awarded a victory in that press freedom case in March.
“The New York Times categorically rejects the politically motivated allegations brought by the Trump administration’s EEOC. Our employment practices are merit-based and focused on recruiting and promoting the best talent in the world. We will defend ourselves vigorously,” Danielle Rhoades Ha, senior vice president of communications for the NYT, said in a statement.
“Throughout this process, the EEOC deviated from standard practices in highly unusual ways,” she continued. She further noted that the allegation is focused on a single personnel decision for one of more than 100 deputy positions in the newsroom and that “EEOC’s filing makes sweeping claims that ignore the facts to fit a predetermined narrative.”
NYT hired the most qualified candidate for the role and did not factor race or gender into the hiring decision, Rhoades Ha said.
EEOC highlighted the NYT’s “well-documented commitment to enacting race and sex conscious decision making in the workforce through its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies.”
The company’s 2021 “Call to Action” as well as other publications outline its plans to up non-White and female representation among its leadership, EEOC said.
Kalpana Kotagal, EEOC’s only Democratic commissioner, said she voted against authorizing litigation against the NYT because she both disagrees with the substance of the case and doesn’t “believe it’s a good use of scarce agency resources,” per a post on LinkedIn.
“Regrettably, I fear this litigation is driven not by the merits, but by a desire to advance the administration’s political agenda, which weakens civil rights protections for workers and undermines employer efforts to advance equal employment opportunity,” Kotagal said. “Notably, this litigation is filed on the heels of New York Times reporting on the weaponization of the agency, and the diversion of limited resources toward cases that align with the administration’s priorities.”
The second Trump administration has targeted diversity programs from the start, and President Trump in his most recent State of the Union address even claimed the administration “ended DEI.”
EEOC said the agency brought the lawsuit after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through the administrative conciliation process. The agency requested that the court grant a permanent injunction enjoining the NYT from discriminating against employees because of race or sex, order the company to provide back pay to the charging party and put the charging party in a deputy editor position, among other demands.
