Trump’s EEOC chair is suing The New York Times because ‘we should bring it on behalf of white workers too’

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission—the federal agency born from the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to shield the nation’s most historically marginalized workers—filed suit earlier this month against The New York Times, alleging the paper illegally discriminated against a white male editor who was passed over for a promotion in favor of a less-qualified candidate. EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas thinks it’s the first race and sex discrimination case the agency has brought on behalf of a white man in at least a decade.

“We should bring it on behalf of black workers, but we should bring it on behalf of white workers too,” Lucas said Wednesday at Fortune‘s Workplace Innovation Summit in Atlanta. “That’s mixed messaging that says to white men you don’t need to apply — and that is not fair.”

The New York Times has called the lawsuit politically motivated. The fight over what it means has only just begun. Lucas offered a defense of a perspective that is proving perhaps surprisingly unstraightforward in this day and age: the concept that civil rights apply equally to everyone.

The complaint, filed May 4 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, centers on a 2025 hiring decision in the Times‘ Real Estate section. According to the EEOC, a white male Times employee—a nine-year veteran of the paper’s International Desk with more than 25 digital journalism awards and direct real-estate journalism experience—applied for an open deputy real estate editor position. He was never called back for the final interview round.

The four candidates who did advance: a white woman, a Black man, an Asian woman and a multiracial woman. The multiracial woman got the job. Per the EEOC complaint, she had no experience covering real estate, which had been listed as a basic qualification in the public posting. Interview panel notes described her as “a bit green overall.” Internal communications showed the editor........

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