Trump’s DOJ Doesn’t Care About Civil Rights: It Wants To Weaponize Them Against Us

Trump’s DOJ Doesn’t Care About Civil Rights: It Wants To Weaponize Them Against Us

The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has proven that it is not interested in protecting civil rights, but rather that it is interested in using civil rights law as a weapon against employers who try to give underrepresented workers a level playing field. In April 2026, the DOJ used the False Claims Act, a law built to punish companies that defraud the federal government, to get its first $17 million settlement out of International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) over its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion practices (DEI). The message to every company that does business with the current administration is unmistakable: trying to include people who have historically been shut out of hiring, promotions, and leadership will now cost more than continuing to exclude them, if the Trump administration has its way.

What Is the False Claims Act?

The False Claims Act (FCA) allows for the recovery of government funds if a private company knowingly certifies false information in order to secure a government contract or payment. Under the act, the government may sue to recover the money it paid out, plus civil penalties.

The FCA also has a qui tam provision, which allows for private individuals, such as current and former employees of companies who are committing fraud on the government, to file suit on the government’s behalf and collect a share of the funds that were fraudulently obtained. This structure provides for anyone with inside knowledge/proof of a company’s practice a financial incentive to report them. This law is meant to recover funds from companies that are committing fraud, but the current DOJ has moved to use this law in a cynical manner designed to undermine civil rights advances.

In May 2025, the DOJ launched the Civil Rights Fraud Initiative, a new unit built to turn the FCA into a tool against federal contractors and grant recipients that certify compliance with civil rights laws while they promote DEI. The initiative traces back to Executive Order 14173, Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity, and leaned on the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, a case about college admissions, to justify extending the same theory into private employment. 600 U.S. 181 (2023).  A little more than a year later, we now know that the DOJ’s Civil Rights Fraud Initiative has been built to punish employers for their programs to increase opportunities for historically disadvantaged groups.

The International Business Machines Corporation Settlement

On April 10, 2026, the DOJ announced the first settlement ever secured under the Civil Rights Fraud Initiative. International Business Machines Corporation agreed to pay the United States $17,077,043, inclusive of civil penalties, to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by failing to comply with the anti-discrimination certifications built into its federal contracts.

Every federal contractor has to certify that it will not take race, color, national origin, or sex into account when making employment decisions. The DOJ alleged IBM broke that promise, not by discriminating against employees from underrepresented backgrounds, but by trying to support them. According to the government’s own account in the press release, IBM:

• Tied manager bonus compensation to a “diversity modifier” that rewarded progress toward demographic targets,
• Used “diverse interview slates” that factored race and sex into who got interviewed for open roles,
• Set race and sex demographic goals for individual business units and factored progress toward those goals into employment decisions,
• Offered certain “training, partnership, mentoring, and leadership development programs” based on race or sex.

None of these practices excluded anyone from a job because of their race or sex. They were IBM’s attempt to make sure the people who are so often passed over for interviews, promotions, and leadership roles or people who never had access to educational opportunities or resources, actually got support and opportunities for roles within their company. The DOJ treated that attempt as fraud on the federal government. Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward summed up the government’s position bluntly: “The Department launched the Civil Rights Fraud Initiative to root out this misconduct, hold offenders accountable, and end this practice for good.”

The full settlement agreement reads like a standard FCA resolution in almost every respect, including, boilerplate cooperation credit language, a release of civil claims, and the usual reservation of rights for criminal prosecution. What actually stands out is what IBM got credit for. The company disclosed facts from its own internal investigation, helped the government calculate damages and penalties, and voluntarily ended or changed the very programs the DOJ says were fraudulent, all before the settlement was signed. The inside knowledge the government receives from that will become a standard for how they attack companies in the future to try to eliminate opportunities for people of color, women, and others who have traditionally been marginalized.

Civil rights law exists to protect employees, not to punish employers for trying to provide them fair opportunities. When Congress passed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it was responding to workplaces where only certain races and sexes got hired, promoted, and paid, and it built a legal framework to stop that. Using that same framework to punish an employer for tracking diversity goals or running a mentoring program for underrepresented employees turns the purpose of the law inside out.

Why This Still Matters, Even Without a Court Ruling

To be clear, this settlement is not a court ruling that DEI programs violate federal law. IBM settled to avoid the cost and uncertainty of prolonged litigation, and the settlement agreement itself states that the claims resolved are allegations only, with no determination of liability.

So it is fair to ask whether any of this really changes anything. It does, just not in the way a court opinion would. This is the DOJ’s first move under a brand-new enforcement initiative, and it shows exactly what theory the government is now willing to build a $17 million case around, whether or not that theory would even survive a courtroom. Employers change their behavior around that kind of risk long before anyone tests it in front of a judge, the same way a new agency policy shapes conduct before it is ever litigated. The DOJ’s willingness to use a law built for treble damages against diversity programs will not be lost on federal contractors watching from the sidelines.

Employers should not bend the knee to the federal government on a law they know is not illegal – diverse employees deserve to stay protected and have opportunities in the workplace.

What This Means for Workers

This settlement is a signal to every company watching, government contractor or not, about whom the government will attack. Companies may react the same way IBM eventually did: scaling back diversity programs, mentoring initiatives, and demographic tracking, not because a court found them illegal, and not because these programs are ineffective or unhelpful to those who need it most, but because no company wants to be the DOJ’s next headline.

What has not changed through any of this is the strong body of civil rights protections developed over many decades, across numerous Democratic and Republican administrations. Title VII has prohibited employment decisions made because of race or sex since 1964, and California’s FEHA goes further. That was true before this settlement and it remains true.

It is wrong to punish employers for trying to create opportunities for those who have traditionally been excluded from them. These protections exist to stop employers from making decisions based on race, sex, national origin, disability, religion, sexual orientation, and other protected characteristics – not to hand the government an ideological weapon against the companies doing the right thing. No worker should have to watch the very protections meant for them get rebranded as a crime. It is important to remember that every employee has strong protections against discrimination and you should not be afraid to come forward with complaints if you believe your employer has violated your workplace rights.

If you believe your workplace rights are being violated, contact Bryan Schwartz Law, P.C.