CBS Studios and its parent Paramount have been sued for allegedly carrying diversity quotas that discriminate against straight white men in what may be the opening legal salvo against efforts to boost diversity and inclusion in Hollywood in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision knocking down affirmative action.
Brian Beneker, a script coordinator for SEAL Team, alleges in a lawsuit filed in California federal court Wednesday that he was repeatedly denied a staff writer job after the implementation of an “illegal policy of race and sex balancing” that promoted the hiring of “less qualified applicants who were members of more preferred groups,” namely those who identify as minorities, LGBTQ or women. He seeks at least $500,000, as well as a court order making him a full-time producer on the series and barring the further use of discriminatory hiring practices.
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Beneker is represented by America First Legal Foundation, a conservative group founded by Stephen Miller, a White House policy adviser under the Trump Administration. The organization has been filing complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against major companies, including Morgan Stanley, Starbucks and McDonald’s, over corporate diversity and hiring practices that allegedly run afoul of civil rights laws. CBS, which declined to comment, is believed to be the first company in the entertainment industry in its crosshairs.
The lawsuit was filed following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year striking down race-conscious admissions in colleges and universities in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. In that case, the group that sued claimed a violation of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, which protects against discrimination by the government. Although the ruling is not directly applicable to companies, which are governed by a separate set of federal and state anti-discrimination laws that do not allow employers to consider race in hiring decisions, several legal experts told The Hollywood Reporter to expect a surge of reverse discrimination lawsuits challenging diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the opinion, “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”
In the complaint, Beneker, who has worked as a script coordinator for CBS’ SEAL Team since 2017 and also wrote some episodes as a freelance scriptwriter, details instances in which he was allegedly passed up for staff writing positions in favor of Black or women candidates, who he claims were less experienced than he was and often had no writing credits.
When he asked why a Black writer was hired instead of him in 2019, he was allegedly told by the showrunner that it was because CBS wanted a minority to satisfy racial quotas for its writers rooms. It was indicated to him that he “did not check any diversity boxes” as a straight, white man, per the complaint.
Since 2020, when he was allegedly assured that he would receive the next available staff writing position, Bedeker says CBS has brought on at least six additional writers, all of whom are women.
“During Season 6, (in approximately May of 2022), two female writer’s assistants, without any writing credits, were hired as staff writers,” states the complaint. “The first of these two hires was black. The second identified as lesbian.”
The lawsuit argues CBS’ hiring practices has “created a situation where heterosexual, white men need ‘extra’ qualifications (including military experience or previous writing credits) to be hired as staff writers when compared to their nonwhite, LGBTQ, or female peers.”
According to the complaint, CBS carries racial quotas. In a 2022 interview, CBS Entertainment Group chief executive George Cheeks allegedly said he set a goal that all writers rooms on the network’s primetime series be made up of at least 40 percent minorities for the 2021-22 season. Seventeen of 21 shows hit or exceeded that target, he said.
For the 2022-23 broadcast season, the network said in 2020 that half of all writers must be nonwhite as part of a broad initiative to “more accurately reflect diversity both on-screen and behind-the-camera.”
The complaint brings claims for violations of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which bars racial discrimination in the making and enforcement of private contracts, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, religion and sex, among other things.
The lawsuit further calls into question the legality of diversity, equity and inclusion programs that explicitly account for race, which was on legally tenuous ground even before the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. Last year, 13 Republican Attorneys General wrote letters to Fortune 100 companies warning them that several of their efforts to boost diversity are discriminatory. In response, a group of Democrat Attorneys General urged them to “double-down on diversity-focused programs.”
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Department of Justice maintain that Title VII bars discriminating in all actions affecting the terms and conditions of employment, including those falling short of hiring, firing and promotion decisions, wrote EEOC commissioner Andrea Lucas in a Reuters op-ed. The Supreme Court’s ruling could implicate race-conscious corporate DEI initiatives from providing race-restricted access to mentoring, internship or training programs to tying executive or employee compensation to the company achieving certain demographic targets.
A federal judge last year dismissed an investor lawsuit against Starbucks’ board for supporting the company’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies. The complaint targeted a policy aiming to increase minority representation at all corporate levels to at least 30 percent by 2025.
