Deloitte has agreed to pay $21.5 million to settle allegations from the Department of Justice that the Big Four firm violated the False Claims Act by failing to comply with anti-discrimination requirements in its federal contracts and discriminating against employees and applicants on the basis of their race or sex as a result of its diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
The Trump administration has been pursuing various businesses, firms and universities in an effort to shut down DEI programs, which spread across corporate America in response to the killings of George Floyd, Briana Taylor and others that set off the Black Lives Matter movement. Accounting firms including Deloitte, PwC and others made efforts to increase hiring and promotions of women and men from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, but efforts in the Trump administration have caused many companies and firms to pull back from those efforts.
The Deloitte settlement is the latest False Claims Act resolution announced by the DOJ that it secured under a Civil Rights Fraud Initiative it launched in May 2025. Deloitte LLP, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Deloitte & Touche LLP, Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP, and Deloitte Transactions and Business Analytics LLP have agreed to pay the United States $21.5 million to resolve the allegations.
Most federal contracts include a provision that requires contractors to provide equal opportunity to employees and applicants for employment. As a condition to being a federal contractor, the company must certify that it will not discriminate against an employee or applicant for employment because of race or sex and must further certify that it will take steps to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, "without regard to" race or sex. The settlement resolves allegations that from 2017 to the present, Deloitte falsely certified compliance with these conditions, while engaging in discriminatory race and sex-based employment practices.
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"Government contractors cannot reward or penalize employees based on race or sex — and labeling the practice DEI does not make it lawful," said Attorney General Todd Blanche in a statement Monday. "The Justice Department will aggressively pursue government contractors that have used taxpayer dollars to fund unlawful discrimination."
"We are pleased to have resolved this matter to avoid the cost and distraction of protracted litigation, allowing us to remain focused on attracting and developing exceptional talent with the skills and capabilities our clients rely on every day," said a statement forwarded by a Deloitte spokesperson.
The DOJ and a group known as the American Alliance for Equal Rights that has been pushing to end DEI programs alleged that Deloitte took race or sex into account when making its hiring, promotion and staffing decisions to achieve progress toward non-public race and sex-based workforce composition goals. Business units within Deloitte received monthly summaries tracking the demographic goals within the unit, where representation or advancement toward the goal was highlighted in green, yellow or red depending on whether the goal was exceeded, met or slightly missed, or significantly below the goal. In addition, the DOJ alleged that Deloitte's partners, principals and managing directors were evaluated, in part, based on their contributions to helping Deloitte achieve its workforce composition goals. For a two-year period, approximately 150 of Deloitte's most senior officials' compensation could be affected if their business units did not meet demographic goals set by Deloitte.
The DOJ alleged these goals were also intended to impact Deloitte's promotion decisions, as business units were assigned goals for racial and sex makeup of their yearly leadership classes. For example, where the class of candidates initially met Deloitte's demographic goals, Deloitte identified leadership candidates by race and sex in a spreadsheet when circulating the list of candidates, and suggested the individuals involved in selecting the candidates promote specific employees to "equitably maintain the current mix."
The DOJ also alleged that Deloitte set goals pertaining to the demographics of employees staffed to federal contracts, and sought to make statistically equal the percentage of Deloitte identified under-represented minorities and non-URMs who were understaffed or "on the bench." Deloitte identified employees that were available to be staffed on projects by race and sex and provided names of those employees to staffing managers and suggested that the managers consider staffing those employees whose utilization would help Deloitte achieve its goal of achieving parity between the percentage of URMs and non-URMs who were understaffed or "on the bench."
The DOJ claimed that Deloitte offered certain training, mentoring, leadership development programs, educational opportunities or resources, and/or similar opportunities only to certain employees, with eligibility limited on the basis of race or sex. For example, Deloitte ran the Springboard and Compass programs, where eligibility to participate was limited on the basis of race and sex. These programs were designed to boost the career prospects of these individuals over others through sponsorship and networking.
The civil settlement includes the resolution of claims brought under the whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act by the American Alliance for Equal Rights, under which a private party can file an action on behalf of the United States and receive a portion of any recovery. Under the resolution, the group will receive $4,300,000.
