Three patents, a top-secret clearance, and 14 straight rejections from one company
A job applicant has sued Qualcomm, alleging the chip maker's diversity hiring policies shut him out of 14 roles.
The complaint, filed October 23, 2026, in the US District Court for the Southern District of California, claims Qualcomm repeatedly passed over the applicant - a white male over 40 - for positions he says he was well qualified for. In each case, according to the filing, the company either picked a younger, non-white, or female candidate, or left the role unfilled altogether.
The applicant, who is representing himself, brings five counts under California's Fair Employment and Housing Act, the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He names both Qualcomm and the company's Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer as defendants.
Fourteen applications. Zero offers.
According to the complaint, the applicant applied for 14 separate positions at Qualcomm between approximately March 2024 and October 2026. The roles spanned cybersecurity engineering, product management, IT governance, data governance, classified programs, and business development. Two progressed to "Applied" status. The other twelve came back as "No offer." The complaint alleges Qualcomm provided "no substantive explanation for its rejections."
The filing puts Qualcomm's DEI program squarely in the frame. According to the complaint, Qualcomm had "for over a decade, maintained and publicly promoted a diversity, equity, and inclusion ('DEI') policy and corresponding corporate programs that shaped and directed the company's hiring decisions and practices." The filing alleges Qualcomm baked DEI considerations into "its talent acquisition strategy, its stated goals for workforce composition, and its human resources practices, including the hiring processes for the positions at issue."
What that meant in practice, the complaint alleges, was a preference for candidates who "were not white, not male, or both."
The CHRO's alleged role is central to the filing. According to the complaint, the executive "bore ultimate institutional responsibility for the human resources and talent acquisition policies and practices that governed each of Plaintiff's application processes." The filing alleges she "directed, supervised, and ratified the discriminatory hiring criteria and DEI-driven selection policies" applied to the applicant's applications, and "personally approved, directed, or ratified the decisions" to deny them.
The complaint also points to what it frames as a broader pattern. The applicant says he "is informed and believes" that two other Qualcomm employees - both described as white males over 40 - "were subjected to adverse employment actions" under the CHRO's direction. One of those employees, according to the filing, served as Qualcomm's Trusted Execution Environment architect, was promoted to lead the entire program, then was "subjected to an adverse employment action and received a termination settlement." The complaint states that in that employee's view, the terminations were "age-motivated - specifically, that Qualcomm targeted experienced employees who were not young engineers willing to work 60 hours per week, as is expected and demanded at Qualcomm."
The complaint notes that Qualcomm "thereafter scaled back certain DEI programs and public representations" following heightened legal scrutiny of DEI practices after 2023. But the filing alleges the "discriminatory effects of Qualcomm's DEI-influenced hiring criteria continued to affect Plaintiff's applications during the period at issue."
The applicant describes himself in the filing as a senior technology professional holding a Department of Defense Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information security clearance, multiple industry certifications, and three US patents in cybersecurity and personal information security. The complaint notes Qualcomm's own public statements seek candidates who "[l]everage deep security knowledge and experience to achieve highly critical engineering business objectives" - qualifications the applicant says he meets.
Before filing suit, the applicant obtained two right-to-sue notices from the California Civil Rights Department - the state agency that handles workplace discrimination complaints - on July 10 and July 20, 2026. He also filed a charge with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on October 9, 2026.
The complaint seeks lost wages and benefits, emotional distress damages, double damages under the ADEA for what it alleges was willful conduct, punitive damages, attorneys' fees and costs, and a court order directing Qualcomm to stop the alleged discriminatory hiring practices. The applicant has demanded a jury trial.
For HR leaders, the case is a sharp reminder that DEI-informed hiring programs face legal challenge from every direction - and that the executive who owns talent strategy can end up named on the complaint alongside the company.
The allegations in the complaint have not been tested, and no court has made any findings or rulings on the merits of the claims.
