Your DEI grant program could be next – here's what this ruling really means
Progressive Insurance escaped a racial discrimination lawsuit – but its race-restricted grant program is a wake-up call for HR and DEI teams.
On February 24, 2026, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled against Nathan Roberts, a white trucking business owner who alleged he was shut out of a race-restricted grant program run by Progressive Insurance and its partner, Circular Board Inc. The court dismissed his case – not because the grant program was necessarily lawful, but because Roberts never completed and submitted his application.
The grant program at the center of the dispute was called the Driving Small Business Forward Fund. Progressive offered ten grants of $25,000 each to help small businesses purchase a commercial vehicle, with eligibility limited, among other criteria, to Black-owned businesses. Roberts, who owns Freedom Truck Dispatch LLC, alleged he received a promotional email from Progressive inviting him to apply. He started the online application, realized that only Black-owned businesses were eligible, and closed the form without submitting it. Two months after the application deadline, he sued.
His legal argument rested on a federal civil rights law – one that prohibits racial discrimination in contracts, not just in workplaces. He alleged that Progressive and Circular Board had effectively denied him the chance to even compete for the grant because of his race, and he sought damages on behalf of himself and others in the same position.
The appeals court was not persuaded. The majority held that Roberts had no one to blame but himself. Because he chose to walk away from the application before submitting it, the court found he had never actually been subjected to the program's racial criteria. There was no race-based barrier to filing an application, the court said, and nothing stopped Roberts from completing and submitting it. The harm he complained of, in the court's view, was a harm he created for himself.
A dissenting judge pushed back hard. In a lengthy opinion, Circuit Judge Boggs argued that requiring a deterred applicant to go through the motions of submitting a doomed application before he can claim discrimination misreads decades of civil rights law. Citing foundational Supreme Court cases, the dissent argued that a person deterred from applying because of an openly discriminatory policy is just as much a victim as someone who applies and gets turned down. The ruling, the dissent said, effectively rewards discrimination by requiring applicants to perform a futile act before courts will hear their complaints.
The case was dismissed without prejudice, which means Roberts is not permanently barred from refiling. Whether he does remains to be seen.
For HR professionals, the significance of this case goes well beyond the outcome for Roberts. The lawsuit is a clear signal of the litigation environment surrounding race-conscious corporate programs in the wake of the Supreme Court's 2023 ruling against affirmative action in university admissions. Since that decision, companies across the country have been reconsidering supplier diversity initiatives, DEI-focused grant programs, and race-specific opportunities – many of which are designed, communicated, and sometimes administered with HR's involvement.
The Roberts case illustrates exactly how that exposure can materialize. A promotional email, a grant with explicit racial eligibility requirements, and one prospective applicant who decided not to apply was enough to generate a class-action federal lawsuit, years of litigation, and a nationally published court opinion that highlights the legal vulnerability of race-restricted programs. The fact that the case was ultimately dismissed on standing grounds – rather than on the merits of whether the grant program was lawful – means the underlying question remains open.
HR leaders overseeing DEI initiatives, supplier diversity programs, or any opportunity programs tied to race-based criteria should treat this case as a cue to revisit those programs with legal counsel. The legal ground beneath race-conscious corporate programs continues to shift, and this ruling, divided as it was, suggests the courts have not yet settled on a consistent approach.
