Staff Reports
Seattle’s experiment in mandatory racial training just hit a legal speed bump. A federal appeals court has told the city it cannot brush a former employee’s harassment claims under the rug. Now the Race and Social Justice Initiative — Seattle’s version of woke training — will face a jury after the Ninth Circuit revived a hostile‑work‑environment suit that a lower court had thrown out.
Ninth Circuit revives hostile‑work‑environment claims
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in an opinion written by Chief Judge Mary H. Murguia, reversed part of the district‑court ruling and sent Joshua Diemert’s Title VII and Washington law claims back to the trial court. The panel decided there is enough evidence — when viewed in the light most favorable to Diemert — to let a jury decide whether Seattle’s DEI and Race and Social Justice Initiative (RSJI) trainings and workplace conduct created a racially hostile environment. Judges William A. Fletcher and Lucy H. Koh joined the opinion. The case will return to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington for further proceedings.
What the court relied on
Allegations the appeals court accepted for now
The opinion lists several troubling allegations that the Ninth Circuit accepted for summary‑judgment purposes. Diemert’s filings say trainers at an “Undoing Institutional Racism” workshop allegedly told staff that “all white people are cannibals,” that “racism is in white people’s DNA,” and that “white people are like the devil.” He also says coworkers called him a white supremacist after he spoke up, that a co‑worker refused aid to an eligible white applicant because of “white privilege,” and that supervisors made comments denying that white employees could be victims of racism. The court summarized its holding bluntly: “We conclude that these incidents were sufficiently numerous, frequent, and severe to create a triable issue as to the existence of a racially hostile work environment.” That language sends the harassment claims back to trial, even as the court left other claims dismissed.
Why this matters for Seattle DEI and Title VII law
This ruling is more than a technical win for Joshua Diemert and his counsel at the Pacific Legal Foundation. It’s a warning shot to cities running mandatory DEI programs on the taxpayer dime. Courts will not automatically shield government employers when employees say trainings and workplace culture cross the line into discrimination. The Ninth Circuit did not decide who is right; it only said a reasonable jury could find the conduct severe or pervasive enough to violate Title VII and state law. But the practical result is the same: Seattle faces a jury trial over its Race and Social Justice Initiative and whether that program helped create a hostile workplace.
Seattle should act — quietly and sensibly
City officials can keep defending RSJI in court, or they can choose the simpler route: stop turning city workplaces into political workshops. Residents need help paying utility bills, not lectures about “cannibalism” and inherited guilt. City leaders control the program; they can pause caucuses and privilege exercises and rewrite trainings to focus on lawful, non‑discriminatory practices. If Seattle wants to avoid more lawsuits and damaged public trust, it should retool DEI into real workplace training — or end the mandatory elements altogether. Either way, the voters and a jury will get a say sooner rather than later.
