A growing number of law firms are purportedly engaging in what some are calling “woke lawfare,” employing legal settlements to mandate diversity initiatives and race-based hiring quotas within American corporations, a conservative pro-market group suggests.
According to a report from Alliance for Consumers, which was initially revealed by the Daily Caller News Foundation, numerous legal settlements over the last ten years have compelled companies to adopt diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, often with negative effects on shareholder value and, in the end, consumers. It appears that these legal resolutions have contributed significantly to the expansion of DEI frameworks throughout corporate America.
“These settlements have become a crucial driver of DEI policies, funneling large amounts of money into the DEI machinery and enabling the entrance of DEI activists into organizations,” noted OH Skinner, Executive Director of Alliance for Consumers, in an interview with DCNF. “Moreover, every settlement has enriched trial attorneys, allowing them to pursue even more lawsuits.”
Alliance for Consumers examined eight closed cases alongside five ongoing legal disputes across the finance, retail, shipping, technology, and government sectors. The report claims that “the American legal system is being weaponized for political aims.”
It goes on to assert, “Lawsuits are more frequently utilized not for resolving conflicts or compensating victims, but to impose policy shifts that advocates couldn’t accomplish through democratic methods.”
For example, following extensive litigation stemming from Chen-Oster v. Goldman Sachs, the firm settled allegations of systematically undercompensating and under-promoting women, agreeing to pay $215 million and engage external firms to assess pay and performance criteria. The stipulations effectively subjected ideologically significant HR decisions to outside oversight, the report elaborates.
The plaintiffs drew support from multiple left-leaning advocacy organizations, such as Public Justice, which contributed an amicus brief for the case.
Other instances reveal a trend among leading law firms, many of which typically donate primarily to Democratic candidates, advocating for settlements that incorporate external reviewers in corporate HR practices, claims Alliance for Consumers.
In the case of Ellis, et al. v. Google LLC, three former employees of Google filed a gender discrimination lawsuit, claiming the company systematically underpaid women and assigned them to lower roles than their male counterparts. The settlement from 2022 required a $118 million payout and mandated that Google hire a third-party expert to evaluate its hiring strategies, as well as retain an independent labor economist to review pay equality. Google also had to accept oversight from an external settlement monitor for three years.
This case underscores how gender discrimination lawsuits can pave the way for a permanent outside bureaucracy to oversee hiring and pay decisions, according to Alliance for Consumers. The report remarks that it shows a coordinated strategy by aligned law firms and activist backers to override democratic processes, imposing progressive workforce policies on corporate America.
“It’s certainly true that some companies were more amenable to these results,” Skinner remarked. “And I think it’s fair to say that some groups within these companies may have been in favor of these outcomes. Yet the overarching impact of these lawsuits and settlements was to entrench DEI deeper into corporate America than would have otherwise been plausible.”
Alliance for Consumers indicates that the approach of using labor lawsuit settlements to enforce racial hiring criteria has been in motion for decades.
A racial discrimination suit against Abercrombie and Fitch, filed in 2003, became “a vehicle for a coalition of civil rights groups to extract race-focused hiring benchmarks,” the report notes.
The 2005 settlement, which accused Abercrombie of discrimination against minorities and female employees, mandated that the company appoint a vice president of diversity and recruit 25 “diversity recruiters.” The settlement also required that advertising reflect diversity by including individuals from minority backgrounds.
Years later, Kaiser Permanente settled for $11.5 million for 2,225 Black employees who claimed they were underpaid compared to their non-Black colleagues. Kaiser agreed to hire a consultant to ensure the fairness and equity of compensation and advancement opportunities for African American employees, as detailed in a press release from 2021. The organization also committed to having an external consultant review all pay and promotional decisions to address any inequities swiftly.
This settlement illustrates a broader progressive legal network that uses employment litigation to implement race-conscious workplace reforms through class action settlements rather than through legislative channels, notes Alliance for Consumers.
The organization is calling on lawmakers and state attorneys general to recognize the courtroom “weaponization” aimed at pursuing ideological change. “States should enact laws that prevent lawfare from becoming a profitable pathway for trial lawyers and activists,” Skinner advised. “From curtailing public nuisance litigation regarding lawful, licensed, regulated products to removing the preferred tactics of activists and trial lawyers, there’s a lot conservative state legislatures and governors can do to safeguard against lawfare, but it’s crucial they take action sooner rather than later.”
