Nike faces probe over alleged discrimination against white workers

Nike Inc. is under investigation by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over allegations that diversity goals for its US workforce discriminated against White employees and applicants.

  The probe was disclosed Wednesday in a filing in a Missouri federal court, in which the EEOC said Nike hadn’t provided adequate information for the agency to conduct its investigation, which began in 2024 and was not previously made public.

 

“This feels like a surprising and unusual escalation,” a Nike spokesperson said in a statement emailed to Bloomberg. “We have had extensive, good-faith participation in an EEOC inquiry into our personnel practices, programs, and decisions and have had ongoing efforts to provide information and engage constructively with the agency.”

 

The probe focuses on whether the company violated employment laws under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It singles out the sneaker manufacturer’s aim of increasing representation of racial and ethnic minorities, by 2025, to at least 30% for US employees at the director level and above and at least 35% for the US corporate staff overall. 

 

“Nike may have violated Title VII by engaging in a pattern or practice of disparate treatment against White employees, applicants and training program participants in hiring, promotion, demotion or separation decisions (including selection for layoffs); internship programs; and mentoring, leadership development and other career-development programs,” the EEOC said in a filing with the US District Court in Missouri’s Eastern Division.

 

President Donald Trump has made rooting out what he calls “illegal DEI” a priority of his second administration, asking federal agencies to find and prosecute corporate programs that discriminated against White workers.

 

The Nike probe, reported earlier by Bloomberg Law, stems from a May 2024 charge sought by current EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas, who was then a Republican commissioner with the agency. Individual commissioners can initiate their own investigations into companies.

 

The agency said Wednesday that Nike hasn’t fully complied with a subpoena in the case and it asked the court to force Nike “to produce all information sought in the subpoena.”

 

Nike said it has “shared thousands of pages of information and detailed written responses to the EEOC’s inquiry” and is “in the process of providing additional information.”

 

Nike had among the most noticeable shift in hiring of non-White workers among the largest companies from 2020 to 2021, according to a Bloomberg analysis of data the company reported to the EEOC.