A federal discrimination watchdog is suing The New York Times, alleging the paper violated the Civil Rights Act when it passed over a white male to fill an open editor position.
The Lawsuit
As reported on Thursday’s AM Update, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed a lawsuit against The Times on behalf of a white male employee, who believes he failed to earn a promotion because of his race and gender.
The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, does not name the journalist, but New York magazine reported it is likely Bryant Rousseau, a senior editor and producer on the international desk at The Times who has been with the paper for more than a decade. Rousseau’s LinkedIn profile matches the job descriptions in the lawsuit.
In 2025, The Times began the search for a Deputy Real Estate Editor. The position ultimately went to an outside candidate, a non-white woman the EEOC alleged had little to no background in real estate journalism, despite that experience being listed as a job requirement. The agency further alleged no white male candidates advanced to the final round of interviews.
The complaint claims The Times deviated from its normal hiring process to include the eventual hire in the candidate pool, despite her receiving a lower internal rating from the hiring panel than the other finalists.
“The New York Times has a well-documented commitment to enacting race and sex conscious decision making in the workforce through its diversity, equity, and inclusion or DEI… policies,” the EEOC wrote in a statement. “In The New York Times’s 2021 ‘Call to Action’ and throughout numerous other publications, the company stated goals and action plans to increase non-white and female representation in its leadership positions.”
The lawsuit put it more bluntly: “A necessary consequence of the NYT’s intent to increase the percentage of non-White leaders would be a decrease in the percentage of White leaders.”
The EEOC asked a judge to bar The Times from discriminating against employees based on race or sex and to award back pay and other damages to the rejected applicant.
A spokesperson for The New York Times, Danielle Rhoades Ha, pushed back against the claims. “The New York Times categorically rejects the politically motivated allegations brought by the Trump administration’s EEOC,” her statement read. “Our employment practices are merit-based and focused on recruiting and promoting the best talent in the world.”
Legal Analysis
AM Update spoke to employment attorney James Fett, who is not involved with this case but says allegations The Times deviated from its normal hiring process could become a significant factor in the lawsuit:
“It’s one of the important factors. But based on my review of that release, they’ve got the times right by the throat, the non-compliance with your internal procedures is just one of the many red flags. Whether it’s a DEI case or a straight up gender or straight up race case. That’s always something that you look for, if you are representing the employee.”
Fett agrees with The Gray Lady’s assertion that the case is politically motivated, though not necessarily in the way the paper frames it:
“Well, it is politically motivated, but only to the extent that the Trump administration, on day one, said that they were going to vigorously enforce the civil rights law to ensure that the DEI wave was extinguished. So, yeah, it’s a policy mandate that the EEOC is following. But I’d say it’s a good one. In terms of, it’s politically motivated, that is something that is chanted almost every time you have a claim against an employer for violation of the civil rights laws with their DEI program.”
As for Fett’s prediction of the outcome, be believes the location of the filing will play a role:
“It’s in the Southern District of New York… They’re going to have a liberal jury, most likely… So, if they get a fair shot, they’re going to get a very large judgment. And I say that because the cases that have gone to trial have yielded whopping verdicts. I myself have gotten whopping verdicts doing these kind of cases… I don’t know who the judge assigned is, but that’s another huge issue because judges have been known to put their thumb on the scale based on their philosophical predilections when it comes to handling these cases. So, I hope they get a I hope they get a fair judge, and, if they do, they should be looking forward to a healthy judgment.”
Fett says even though many companies have blurred the line between diversity goals and illegal discrimination, the law itself is straightforward:
“It’s really quite simple. You cannot take race or gender into account, period. It doesn’t matter if it’s for DEI. It doesn’t matter if you call it affirmative action. It doesn’t matter if you call it correcting under representation. The law has been this way for a long time, but the rate of non-compliance with that law is at an all time high when it comes to DEI… The Trump administration has another three years to enforce the law this vigorously. We just have to hope that the next administration… will fairly enforce it. I’m not optimistic that that’s going to happen if the Democratic Party takes over. They have almost incorporated DEI as part of their religion. It’s almost a creed that if you’re a liberal Democrat, you have to honor the request for DEI and that’s crazy.”
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