Tenth Circuit applies an "extremely high" bar to reverse-discrimination claims over DEI training
A federal appeals court has rejected a White employee's claim that DEI training created a hostile workplace – again.
The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals on May 11, 2026 affirmed the dismissal of Young's lawsuit against the Colorado Department of Corrections. Young, a former employee, claimed a racial sensitivity training program and what followed it created a hostile work environment for White workers and pushed him to resign. The court said no – for the second time.
Young attended one training session at the department. He quit four months later. He then sued under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and 42 U.S.C. § 1981, a related federal civil rights statute, arguing the training made the workplace hostile to White employees.
To win, Young had to show the workplace was "permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult" severe or pervasive enough to change the terms of his job. Judge Bacharach, writing for the panel, called that bar "extremely high."
Young pointed to specific training content. A glossary, he alleged, defined "race" as an unscientific concept used to justify White people's oppression of minorities. It defined "white exceptionalism" as a belief by some Whites that they aren't racist despite perpetuating white supremacy, and "white fragility" as White discomfort when confronted with information about racial injustice. The department denied using the glossary, but the court accepted Young's account at this stage. The training also recommended videos on discriminatory housing and intersectionality and told leaders to let less powerful people speak first and to treat employees differently based on race.
The court had already ruled in 2024 that the training, on its own, wasn't enough. So Young added five new allegations: that the department was committed to ongoing DEI training; that employees had to endorse its ideology; that supervisors were already using the training in disciplinary decisions; that the training compromised security; and that the department failed to investigate his complaints.
None of it worked.
On ongoing training, the panel noted Young sat through one session and resigned four months later – hardly enough time, the court said, for a workplace to turn "overtly hostile." On endorsement, the court pointed to admonitions in the training that employees didn't need to change their values or beliefs and should discuss questions and challenges from the training. Young hadn't pleaded any facts showing he received negative feedback or that supervisors had even raised the training with him afterward.
On discipline, Young cited one incident in which an officer of a different race allegedly used a racism complaint to reverse a sanction. He didn't say whether the accusation was warranted, when it happened, or whether it affected his work. On security, the court called his worry - that White guards might loosen restrictions to dodge accusations of racism – speculative. On the failure to investigate, Young hadn't shown how it actually changed his working conditions.
His constructive discharge claim, that the environment forced him out, fell with the hostile work environment claim. The dismissal stands with prejudice. Young had filed four versions of the complaint across two cases, and the court said he hadn't explained how another rewrite would fix the gaps.
The decision lands in the wake of Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, where the US Supreme Court held in 2025 that Title VII's disparate treatment provision "draws no distinctions between majority-group plaintiffs and minority-group plaintiffs." The Tenth Circuit cited Ames upfront, and also flagged the Second Circuit's Chislett v. New York City Department of Education, which held that diversity trainings may have created a hostile work environment for a White employee.
For HR, the takeaway is two-sided. Reverse-discrimination claims tied to DEI content are firmly in play. But content alone – even content employees find offensive - won't carry a hostile work environment claim without a pattern of intimidation, ridicule, or insult tied to day-to-day work. The court's footnote notes that Young pointed to the EEOC, the Attorney General, and the Department of Education recognizing that DEI training can rise to unlawful discrimination - and the panel assumed that for argument's sake. What matters, the opinion says, is whether the facts on the ground show a workplace that has been altered.
