An allegedly racially segregated diversity, equity and inclusion training is at the heart of an U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit against Washington University filed Wednesday. The charging party alleged that she and her coworkers at the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center (SCC) were placed into separate Zoom breakout rooms based on race and that she then faced retaliation through termination after complaining to EEOC.
This alleged conduct is a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title I of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, according to EEOC v. The Washington University, filed against the St. Louis, Missouri school.
During President Donald Trump’s administration, EEOC has actively pursued Title VII violation claims that center around DEI programming.
The facts of the case
In June of 2024 after the charging party had been promoted to senior program manager, one of her supervisors reached out via email to say that SCC’s administrative team would participate in mandatory training facilitated by the med school’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. The titles of the sessions were “How Racism Harms” and “Anti-Racism Community Discussions.”
Shortly before the initial training, ODEI told the team that participants would “spend time in shared racial identity spaces” and asked each member to self-identify as either White or BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color). The charging party, who is Black, selected “BIPOC” as her racial identity but also emailed ODEI expressing concern about how “shared racial identity spaces” would work if she is the only “BIPOC” person on her team.
After emailing ODEI, she understood that she would participate in the training with the rest of the SCC team, but “that there would be no ‘shared racial identity spaces’ activities during the training.”
Since its initial planning, the training was moved to several months later and switched to a Zoom call. When the charging party joined the Zoom meeting, there was in fact a “shared racial identity spaces” activity with breakout rooms separated by race.
The complaint features a snippet of an email, in which the charging party says, “Being the only Black person in the training, I was isolated and put in a position that felt profoundly alienating and cruel. It wasn’t just uncomfortable — it was dehumanizing. In 2025, in this political and social climate, the only Black/BIPOC person was literally and figuratively segregated and asked to leave the ‘room.’ It’s egregious.”
The charging party also reminded ODEI that she had flagged this issue months prior and a different decision had been agreed upon for this exact reason.
After the charging party escalated her complaints internally, the investigative body closed the investigation in June 2025, allegedly without a formal resolution. She filed a complaint with EEOC, which notified the university in July 2025. The charging party also notified her supervisors, which is when she said she “began to sense a change” in them and her work began to be shifted to a co-worker.
In October 2025, her supervisor addressed a recent message from the chancellor about the university’s financial difficulties and possible layoffs. The charging party’s supervisor “told SCC staff that SCC was in a different position than the rest of the university because it has different and stable funding,” per court documents, telling the staff that “I foresee no changes to our operations on the horizon. NO staffing changes, reductions or adjustments are even being considered, let alone planned, in our department.”
When the charging party returned from medical leave in late October 2025, her supervisors allegedly decided to terminate her; in November 2025, they told her that there was not enough work for her and that her position would be eliminated effective Dec. 1, 2025.
The court documents note that, prior to the EEOC complaint, the charging party had received “consistent positive feedback.” She had “successfully completed” a leadership program and had been given more responsibility through a clinical trials initiative.
HR Dive reached out to Washington University for comment and did not hear back by the time of publication.
A changing legal landscape
This EEOC iteration has been vocal about cracking down on DEI in the context of Title VII. Last year, EEOC issued joint guidance with the U.S. Department of Justice outlining how DEI programs at work can be unlawful. One technical assistance document, “What To Do If You Experience Discrimination Related to DEI at Work,” alludes to the kind of conduct allegedly experienced in EEOC v. The Washington University.
“Title VII also prohibits employers from limiting, segregating, or classifying employees based on race, sex, or other protected characteristics in a way that affects their status or deprives them of employment opportunities,” EEOC said.
The document also explicitly states that “separating employees into groups based on race, sex, or another protected characteristic when administering DEI or other trainings, or other privileges of employment, even if the separate groups receive the same programming content or amount of employer resources” is prohibited conduct.
In 2026, EEOC also issued a warning to Fortune 500 companies in February regarding DEI programming, in which Chair Andrea Lucas urged them to “reject identity politics.”
Likewise, while Title VII has long been on the books, the current climate has also prompted many reverse discrimination lawsuits — including one that calls out DEI training specifically. In 2022, a Colorado corrections officer filed a lawsuit against his employer, alleging that its DEI trainings on discriminatory housing and intersectionality caused a hostile work environment. In May 2026, the court said the plaintiff couldn’t “say how the content affected his job responsibilities, interactions with fellow employees, or career advancement,” and found that his complaints could not meet the “extremely high” bar for a hostile work environment.