A group of White male current and former employees of Danaher Corp. may proceed with their lawsuit alleging that the company’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies discriminated against them on the basis of race and sex, a federal judge held Friday.
Plaintiffs in Critelli v. Danaher Corp. first claimed in a September 2025 complaint that the life sciences, diagnostics and biotechnology company required diverse interview slates. Namely, the company sought to achieve a benchmark of “50% underrepresented candidates interviewed,” plaintiffs alleged, including women and people of color within that group.
The challenged policies allegedly violated Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Section 1981 of the 1866 Civil Rights Act and state laws. The plaintiffs’ initial complaint incorporated age discrimination claims as well, but those claims were not included in an amended complaint filed in February.
Judge Anne Leigh Gaylord Moe of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida partly denied Danaher’s motion to dismiss, writing that four of the plaintiffs successfully showed that they were rejected in favor of less-qualified applications because of the company’s DEI policy.
Specifically, Moe noted the plaintiffs’ allegations that Danaher loosened job requirements for underrepresented candidates, shortlisted those candidates for interviews and tied talent acquisition employees’ performance evaluations and pay to meet DEI goals.
“The Plaintiffs aren’t entirely certain what Danaher means by ‘people of color,’ but whoever gets the benefit of that designation, it isn’t white men,” Moe said. “White men are effectively second-class candidates, even if they are more qualified.”
Danaher had argued, in part, that the plaintiffs were “merely speculating about why they were not given interviews and promotions” and that its goals were not equivalent to race- or sex-based quotas. The company also said that the plaintiffs failed to show that it knew about their race.
Moe disagreed, stating that the latter argument “misses the forest for the trees” and that it would have been illogical to engineer diverse hiring slates without knowing candidates’ demographics.
Separately, the judge agreed to dismiss one plaintiff’s race discrimination claim while refusing to dismiss his sex discrimination claim. The plaintiff in question showed that he had not been passed over for a less-qualified female candidate, for whom Danaher waived a residency requirement, but did not show that the position had been filled by someone of a different race.
Moe dismissed another plaintiff’s claims for failure to state a claim with leave to amend, noting that he did not allege that he was qualified for the positions to which he applied and did not allege that the positions were filled by candidates outside of his protected class.
Discrimination lawsuits filed by majority-group plaintiffs, sometimes referred to as reverse discrimination lawsuits, have gained increasing prominence in the employment space in recent years. In a notable 2025 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court in Ames v. Ohio Dept. of Youth Services unanimously struck down federal appeals courts’ elevated pleading requirements for such plaintiffs.
Majority-group plaintiffs have particularly targeted DEI programs in their legal filings. Organizational DEI practices have been scrutinized by authorities including the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; EEOC and the U.S. Department of Justice specifically named diverse hiring slates an unlawful practice in guidance issued last year.
Such practices would feature in lawsuits including a high-profile one against Wells Fargo, where plaintiffs alleged the bank required diverse hiring slates and hired candidates who were not qualified for certain roles. Parties to the dispute agreed to settle for $85 million.
Discrimination claims against other forms of DEI programming have met with mixed results for plaintiffs. For example, a Pennsylvania federal judge in August partly sided with a White former HR employee who alleged that she experienced racial hostility and retaliation on the job. And weeks earlier, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals partly sided with a White employee who sued over an employer’s requirement that she adopt an “equity mindset.”
Conversely, the 10th Circuit held that a White Colorado corrections officer failed to show that his employer’s DEI training, which dealt with topics such as racial sensitivity and historical oppression of racial minorities, created a hostile work environment.
