In case you missed it yesterday, a white male employee of the NY Times filed an EEOC complaint claiming he was passed over for a promotion because of his race. The EEOC then filed a lawsuit against the NY Times accursing the paper of racial discriminatin.
When I wrote about all of this it yesterday, I had to rely on the accounts published by various newspapers describing the lawsuit. Not surprisingly, the NY Times' own story about it left out a lot of detail. For instance, here's what the Times published dismissing the main claim in the lawsuit.
The complaint asserts that the white man was more qualified than the person who ultimately got the job. The person at The Times said the job listing specifically sought somebody with experience in service journalism, which the person who got the job had, in addition to experience as a supervisor.
What the Times left out was the fact that the multiracial woman they hired had no experience in real estate journalism at all. She had in fact worked for 8 years at Eater, a site focused on restaurants. The job in question was a senior position in the real estate section.
Anyway, I was able to piece some of this together by looking at reports from other news outlets but I was not able to find a cope of the EEOC lawsuit. Today, I noticed Robby Soave from Reason had a post on X complaining about the fact that major newspapers often don't link to source documents, including in this case.
Why do mainstream media orgs refuse to link to relevant court docs? The EEOC is suing NYT for allegedly discriminating against a white male (!), but you can't just read the suit yourself in any of the coverage from... Washington Post, New York Times, Reuters, Axios, and The…
— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) May 6, 2026
It's a good point and something I've noticed before. It costs these papers nothing to simply link to the source document. Why would choose not to do this if you're trying to inform people? In this case, the NY Times in particular seems to have a motive for not letting people read the actual case against the paper and instead insinuating that a) the guy who complained wasn't qualified and b) this is part of a Trump witch hunt.
In any case, I read the lawsuit and the case it makes is pretty simple and boils down to two points. First, the NY Times had publicly committed itself to expanding diversity in its hiring.
Since at least 2017, NYT has published annual “Diversity and Inclusion Reports” showing the demographic composition of its staff, leadership, and new hires by sex and race with charts, graphs, and multi-year trends.
These reports emphasized the NYT’s goal of increasing representation of Black and Latino workers as well as female workers...
In February 2021, NYT published “A Call to Action,” which it called a “bold plan for building a more diverse, equitable and inclusive New York Times.”
In “A Call to Action,” NYT stated that “people of color—and particularly women of color—remain notably underrepresented in its leadership.”
In its 2022, 2023, and 2024 “Diversity and Inclusion Reports,” NYT defined “people of color” as “all ethnicities excluding white and unspecified.”
And according to the Times' own published documents, these efforts worked, as could be seen by the changing percentages of employees from various categories.
In the 2021 “Call to Action,” NYT stated, among other things, “[t]hese efforts have led to significant progress in diversifying the company. Last year, 48 percent of new hires were people of color. Since 2015, we have increased the overall percentage of people of color at the company from 27 percent to 34 percent; and we have increased the percentage of people of color in leadership from 17 percent to 23 percent. We have also increased the percentage of women at the company from 45 percent to 52 percent; and we have increased the percentage of women in company leadership from 40 percent to 52 percent.”
The Times even published graphs showing the gradual decline of white employees overall and specifically among leadership. You can see these on page 7 of the lawsuit.
Point two is that when a white male with appropriate qualifications applied for a promotion, he didn't even make it to the 2nd interview of finalists. The lawsuit makes the case that the hiring manager for the position was clearly interested in the paper's equity hiring goals.
The Deputy Real Estate Editor was a leadership position in the NYT as defined in NYT’s Diversity and Inclusion Reports from 2017 to 2024.
The hiring manager for the position was Real Estate Editor Nikita Stewart...
Diversity, equity, and inclusion activities were part of Stewart’s performance review in 2024.
Stewart spoke at two or more seminars on diversity, equity, and inclusion where she was introduced using her NYT title.
In her 2024 performance review, Stewart provided a self-review of her contributions that included serving as co-chair of the employment resource group, Black@NYT, and counseling Black journalists to help them rise in their careers.
The lawsuit suggests these goals and the personnel carrying them out played a role in selecting a candidate who, according to the job listing, wasn't qualified.
The job description of the Deputy Real Estate Editor position stated a “basic qualification” for experience with stories about real estate development, the housing market, as well as décor, design and architecture.
In a public job posting for the Deputy Real Estate Editor position, “experience with stories about real estate development, the housing market, as well as décor, design and architecture” was listed as a “Requirement” for the position.
The term “basic qualification” was therefore used interchangeably with the term “requirement” in NYT’s postings for the position.
The white male candidate had experience with real estate journalism but the person selected did not. In fact, the final reviewers did not believe she was qualified.
The selected candidate was not qualified for the Deputy Real Estate Editor position because her experience did not meet all its stated basic requirements, including the job description’s stated requirement for experience with real estate journalism...
At the final panel interview stage, the selected candidate was among the two lowest rated candidates out of the final four candidates.
One final panel interviewer ranked her tied for lowest of the four candidates, describing her as “a bit green overall” and remarked, “I don’t see her contributing to the expansion of the coverage in a significant way.”
Charging Party was more qualified than the multiracial female candidate selected for the Deputy Real Estate Editor position.
Anyway, I would have liked to have spelled all of this out yesterday when I wrote about it but, again, most news outlets were playing hide-and-seek with the actual lawsuit. I'm not surprised that the content of the lawsuit is much more convincing on the details than the summary of it provided by the NY Times in particular. Frankly, the Times' coverage reads more like a cover-up than a news story. Very little effort was made to explain the basis of the complaint.
You can read the whole thing here if you're so inclined. The EEOC is asking for backpay for the person who made the complaint as well as punitive damages. The EEOC also seeks a permanent injunction to prevent future hiring decisions based on race.
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