Photo: MIAMI - FEBRUARY 02: A judges gavel rests on top of a desk in the courtroom of the newly opened Black Police Precinct and Courthouse Museum February 3, 2009 in Miami, Florida. The museum is located in the only known structure in the nation that was designed, devoted to and operated as a separate station house and municipal court for African-Americans. In September 1944, the first black patrolmen were sworn in as emergency policemen to enforce the law in what was then called the "Central Negro District." The precinct building opened in May 1950 to provide a station house for the black policemen and a courtroom for black judges in which to adjudicate black defendants. The building operated from 1950 until its closing in 1963. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
A shocking new report has exposed an unholy alliance of left-wing law firms and activist groups using woke lawfare to force DEI into major American corporations and institutions.
The report, published last month by the Alliance for Consumers, explains how liberal groups like the NAACP and the ACLU are weaponizing the legal system to force companies to adopt DEI policies. In doing so, corporate boardrooms are bypassing shareholders and may be violating their fiduciary duty to maximize returns for investors in order to appease the left-wing mob.
Under this version of “sue and settle,” left-wing trial lawyers pick a high-profile target like Goldman Sachs or Abercrombie and Fitch and launch a legal war. “Trial attorneys file sweeping class-action or systemic-bias suits against large corporate employers, invoking anti-discrimination law as a lever not merely to compensate individual victims but to force institutional transformation,” the report explains.
The law firms filing these suits are funded by deep-pocketed liberal donors with a decidedly partisan agenda. The point isn’t to actually win the cases, but to harass companies long enough to extract concessions in the mediation process.
After the lawsuits are filed, liberal groups like the ACLU and the NAACP then file amicus briefs. These “friend of the court” filings are supposed to help a judge sort through various arguments being made and interpretations of the law. But of course, these amicus briefs are also a chance for the groups’ high-powered public relations teams to generate more negative press coverage against the targeted corporation.
With an assist from the liberal media, suddenly C-suite executives are just as worried about their public image as they are about the actual lawsuit facing their company.
“The attorneys driving this enterprise are not neutral advocates; they are partisan, political operators working in close coordination with activist organizations,” the report explains.
Ultimately, the pressure leads to massive settlements and promises to hire permanent DEI employees or hire outside firms – no doubt also run by committed leftists. In other words, in order to make the lawsuits go away and stop the media smear campaigns, targeted corporations agree to hire woke hall monitors who then enforce DEI orthodoxy throughout the company.
The left has had enormous success with this racket for years.
As the report recounts, in the 2004 case Gonzalez v. Abercrombie & Fitch, left-wing law firms alleged racial discrimination against potential hires. The lawsuit ended in a lucrative $50 million settlement and mandated “an entirely new executive position, the Vice President of Diversity.”
Abercrombie also agreed to “hire 25 full-time diversity recruiters, establish numerical benchmarks for the hiring and promotion of minorities and women, [and] mandate diversity training for every manager,” and agreed to “ongoing” monitoring.
Another case from 2018, Senegal v. JPMorgan Chase, similarly alleged racial bias against black financial advisers. That settlement “earmarked $4.5 million specifically for a DEI fund covering bias training, reviews of branch assignments, and a targeted coaching program for Black advisors.”
More recently, The Walt Disney Company agreed in 2025 to a “$43.25 million settlement” and monitoring by a labor economist to settle a gender-discrimination lawsuit. Now, any time a Disney executive decides to give a raise to a male employee, an outsider who is not accountable to shareholders will be breathing down his or her neck, ensuring an exactly equal raise is given to a female employee.
The scheme is not exactly new. In many ways, it is a more sophisticated version of a similar ploy that “civil rights activist” Al Sharpton used for years to great effect.
Instead of lawsuits, Sharpton would target a company like Honda or Macy’s with boycotts, alleging some form of racial discrimination. Then, as if by magic, that same corporation would cut his group, the National Action Network, a nice check or sponsor a conference to end the boycott. Sometimes they would even hire him as an adviser after a boycott, as the New York Post has explained.
The lawsuits detailed by the Alliance for Consumers are the “Sharpton Shakedown” on steroids, forcing corporations to either defend themselves in court against discrimination or pay the extortion/settlement fee to end the dispute.
O.H. Skinner, the executive director of the Alliance for Consumers, told AMAC Newsline this method goes against the will of shareholders and happens outside normal decision-making channels.
The “DEI bureaucracies” are created “without a single vote in Congress or a state legislature and irrespective of the preferences of shareholders,” Skinner explained. “Leftwing actors are using litigation to impose progressive lifestyle choices and reshape American society.”
The legal assault on shareholder capitalism and free markets can be stopped, but it will take an equally forceful response to do so. Those with a stake in these companies must stand up, potentially through their own lawsuits, to end the shakedowns. Appeasement will not make the woke bullies go away.
Comments