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A US agency sued a Coca-Cola bottling company for discrimination over a networking event it held for female employees at a casino resort, as the Trump administration cracks down on corporate diversity initiatives.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said the company had violated civil rights laws by not inviting male employees to the 2024 getaway in Connecticut, which it said included “a social reception, team-building exercises and recreational activities”.
The case is a sign of the change in focus at the agency, which was set up at the height of the US civil rights movement during the 1960s to stop discrimination. In December its chair Andrea Lucas posted a video on social media in which she encouraged white men to file claims if they believed they had suffered sex or race discrimination.
The case reflected “not merely a shift in emphasis but a fundamental reorientation of enforcement priorities”, said Jenny Yang, a partner at law firm Outten & Golden who chaired the EEOC under Barack Obama.
“Decisions about what to litigate carry real trade-offs . . . it inevitably means fewer resources are available for workers facing substantial forms of discrimination.” She said that to her knowledge it was the first EEOC lawsuit challenging a company’s diversity programme.
The EEOC said in its lawsuit that the company, Coca-Cola Beverages Northeast, “excused female employees who attended the event from their normal work duties . . . and paid them their normal salary or wages”. Male employees “would have attended . . . had they been invited”, it said.
About 250 female employees attended the event at the Mohegan Sun resort, which included an overnight hotel stay and welcome reception for those who had to travel to be there.
The EEOC asked for a jury trial and said the company should pay compensation and punitive damages to male employees for its “malicious and/or reckless indifference”.
Peter Bennett, a lawyer representing the company, told the FT the event “fully complied with existing EEOC regulation and its public commentary approving of such events”.
He said the company “finds it disappointing that the EEOC did not conduct a full investigation and we look forward to having our day in open court where the full story told to a jury will vindicate us”. The company was “confident in [its] values and in [its] continued focus on fairness, respect, and opportunity for everyone”, he said.
The case was initiated by a male production employee at the company’s Londonderry, New Hampshire facility. Japanese beer group Kirin Holdings, which owns Coca-Cola Beverages Northeast, declined to comment. Coca-Cola itself is not a defendant in the case. Coca-Cola and its bottling companies are independent entities.
The EEOC told Coca-Cola Beverages Northeast in the final week of the Biden administration last year that there was “reasonable cause to believe” it had violated the law over the event, according to court filings.
Such a finding often leads to a conciliation process and a settlement. The decision to escalate it to a lawsuit, a move the EEOC typically makes in only a small proportion of cases, was taken under the Trump administration.
Lucas posted on LinkedIn that “sex-segregated employer-sponsored networking, training, and development events” often involved “far more than socialising”.
“Programming creating or facilitating ‘new girls clubs,’ like ‘old boys clubs’ before them, often is designed to promote career development and advancement, provide critical job training and networks, among other benefits and privileges of employment,” she posted.
The EEOC has stepped up investigations into corporate diversity since Trump’s return to office. It wrote to 20 large law firms shortly after the president’s inauguration to request information about their DEI practices.
The Coca-Cola bottling company case “seems like a very minor case for the United States government given that they bring very few cases any given year,” said Michael Selmi, a professor specialising in discrimination law at Arizona State University.
“I think this case is meant as a signal that the EEOC is going after DEI and will do so on behalf of white men.”
The agency said this month that it was seeking information from Nike about allegations that it discriminated against white workers, including through its diversity programmes.
Nike said the EEOC’s move “feels like a surprising and unusual escalation”. It said: “We are committed to fair and lawful employment practices . . . We believe our programmes and practices are consistent with those obligations and take these matters seriously.”