Dive Brief:
- U.S. law firms may have violated federal antitrust laws when they attempted to obtain certification of their employment standards from diversity, equity and inclusion consulting firm Diversity Lab, the Federal Trade Commission announced Friday.
- FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson sent “warning letters” to 42 firms whom the agency said sought Diversity Lab’s Mansfield Certification. In the letters, Ferguson cited the program’s use of “knowledge-sharing calls” between firms and cautioned recipients that sharing competitively sensitive information can unlawfully harm competition for labor.
- Ferguson said the letters were “not intended to suggest” that recipients engaged in illegal conduct; “I write today only to alert you to potential for liability under laws that the FTC directly enforces.” A Diversity Lab spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dive Insight:
The letters are a follow up to Ferguson’s 2025 directive to FTC staff identifying “collusion or unlawful coordination on DEI metrics” as a potentially unlawful practice that could diminish labor competition. In that document, Ferguson said sharing of DEI metrics may exclude certain workers and students from opportunities on the basis of race, sex or sexual orientation.
Ferguson expanded upon this language in his letters to the 42 firms, writing that attempts to include quotas by which law firms agreed to compose panels of job candidates based on personal characteristics, rather than a candidate’s merit, can be anticompetitive.
On its website, Diversity Lab describes its Mansfield Certification program as “an inclusive sourcing process, not a diverse slate policy.” The organization said it asks participating law firms to determine whether they included “at least 30% qualified and underrepresented talent” out of an unlimited number of people considered before making selection or promotion decisions for certain leadership positions or activities.
“Mansfield doesn’t dictate or require that underrepresented talent be ‘slated’ or selected for any given leadership role or activity, nor does it result in any person being excluded from consideration based on race, gender, or any other demographics,” according to Diversity Lab.
Separately, the organization points to a federal judge’s comments about the Mansfield program in a 2025 decision. In Perkins Coie LLP v. U.S. Department of Justice, the Trump administration had claimed that law firm Perkins Coie’s participation in Mansfield was evidence of racial discrimination. Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia disagreed, holding that Mansfield did not establish hiring quotas or other unlawful discriminatory practices.
FTC joins several other federal agencies in targeting corporate DEI programs as part of President Donald Trump’s broader DEI crackdown. The U.S. Department of Justice said last year it would pursue litigation against federal funds recipients under the False Claims Act where recipients are alleged to have implemented discriminatory DEI policies. Similarly, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has outlined how some DEI programs may violate federal civil rights laws.
