Dive Brief:
- JPMorgan Chase subjected Black job candidates to “fake” interviews as part of its “performative” approach to DEI, an applicant with more than two decades of experience in the financial services industry alleged in a lawsuit filed Wednesday (Jackson v. JPMorgan Chase & Co.).
- The plaintiff said the company passed him over for a White candidate with less experience after performing seemingly perfunctory interviews with him and never asking for a resume, according to court documents filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, Detroit division.
- The plaintiff alleged race discrimination under state and federal civil rights law, including Title VII of the Civil Rights of 1964, in the proposed class-action lawsuit. JPMorgan Chase did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dive Insight:
JPMorgan Chase’s behavior toward the plaintiff is part of the bank’s decades-long “unbroken pattern of systemic race discrimination against African Americans, including against its Black customers, employees, and applicants,” per the lawsuit. The bank’s “culture of discrimination infects its policies and practices,” it said.
“Chase’s treatment of [the plaintiff] appears to be part of an insidious practice of fake interviews. Fake interviews occur when a company wants to appear to honor diversity but does not have a genuine commitment to diversity,” according to the lawsuit.
Such practices harm Black applicants and have a disparate impact, the plaintiff alleged.
The plaintiff said an executive recruiter reached out about a managing director/regional executive opportunity with the bank in May 2024 in the Michigan region of JPMorgan Chase’s Consumer Banking, a position nearly identical to one the plaintiff held for Bank of America. However, JPMorgan Chase didn’t ask the plaintiff to provide a resume, which would have documented his experience.
The lawsuit said the bank has stepped back from its DEI commitments after it was no longer “in vogue.”
In March, JPMorgan Chase changed the name of its diversity program from DEI to “DOI,” replacing equity with “opportunity,” according to a memo viewed by HR Dive.
