Seattle’s illegal racial equity policies assault workplace integrity and employee rights

Joshua Diemert has never been one to accept injustice.

“I was raised that way,” he says. “In sixth grade, I stood up to a kid who was bigger than everyone else. He was beating up my friend, and I’m the one that jumped in and said ‘No.’”

Today, it’s government bullies putting Joshua’s guiding principle to the test. The City of Seattle’s racial equity crusade turned his dream job into a hub of racial hostility and discrimination with no escape, no recourse, and shattered rights.

Joshua was initially thrilled when the Seattle Human Services Department (HSD) hired him in 2013 as a program intake specialist. A devoted father with a background in government work, Joshua looked forward to serving the city’s most vulnerable and marginalized communities while providing stability for his family.

The first year was a blur of successes. Joshua quickly developed collaborative relationships across city departments, received excellent evaluations, and earned a “maximum achievement” award.

Later, however, Joshua noticed his work environment had changed.

“It wasn’t explicit at first, but after a couple of years, it was the norm to speak negatively against white people and be told you’re a racist or a white supremacist because you’re white,” he says.

The racial hostility is the unfortunate product of Seattle’s Race and Social Justice Initiative (RSJI), a 2004 directive focused on ending purported institutional racism in city government and achieving racial equity in the community. Led by the Seattle Office for Civil Rights, the initiative forces the use of a critical race theory-driven “Racial Equity Toolkit” into every city function.

Joshua’s department was at the forefront, launching mandatory trainings that aggressively pushed notions of white privilege and collective guilt for white employees.

Some training required Joshua to admit complicity in racism. He was also coerced into participating in racially segregated workshops and faced unrelenting pressure to join racial affinity groups.

The race-soaked rhetoric spilled into the workplace. Managers often repeated the initiative’s principles. The City disseminated and encouraged racist messaging in meetings, emails, and lunchroom conversations.

This messaging, Joshua says, was offensive and completely contrary to his own life experiences and philosophy. “The City wants people to focus on factors they can’t control and then say they have no choice—it’s all predetermined by their identity. This is hopeless and false.”

By 2017, Joshua had repeatedly been refused a promotion after earlier promises of advancement, while supervisors and coworkers regularly berated him about his race.

“I was blown away. I’m like, ‘I can’t believe my employer is saying this stuff. Isn’t this illegal?’” Joshua recalls. “I realized no matter what I did, nothing would change.”

The daily hostility took a heavy toll on Joshua’s health. Yet his department wouldn’t honor a doctor’s recommendation that he be excused from a few months of RSJI training to relieve his stress. And the proper channels for help were a dead end.

“I tried going to human resources, but the people responsible for internal investigations are on RSJI teams. I couldn’t go to the Office of Civil Rights because they literally run the program,” he says. “All the people who were supposed to help me were the same people doing it to me.”

Joshua knew neither his devotion to his job nor accolades for his work performance could overcome the City’s race and social justice framework. So, in December 2020, he filed a Civil Rights Act complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

During that time, Joshua’s harassment worsened to the point he finally resigned and moved his family to Texas. But he didn’t give up his fight. In fact, he’s fighting back harder.

Represented at no charge by PLF, Joshua pivoted from a federal agency to a federal court. He’s suing the City and its mayor, Bruce Harrell, for enforcing an initiative that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee.

A win will vindicate Joshua’s right to workplace equality and protect everyone’s right to be treated fairly, equally, and with dignity, regardless of skin color.

It will also send a clear message to all public employers that it is illegal for them to create racially hostile work environments to advance their own social agendas. Indeed, clones of Seattle’s initiative are popping up in other cities, such as Tacoma, Minneapolis, San Jose, and Dallas—some are even directly modeled on Seattle’s overtly racist program.

“It is unfair and illegal for the government to impose hostile, unequal workplace conditions based on an employee’s race,” explains PLF attorney Laura D’Agostino. “Instead of supporting its employees and providing them with opportunities like all employers should do, the City of Seattle is using an initiative to foster racial discrimination and harassment.”

Joshua admits the ordeal—now going on ten years—has been very hard. But he won’t stop.

“Someone asked me, ‘Why can’t you just be quiet and put your head down?’ Maybe if I did, I’d still be working for Seattle and I’d still have great benefits. But I can’t do that,” he says. “I’ve always stood for what I thought was ethically correct, even if I’m at risk. That’s just ingrained in me.”