Joshua Young spent seven years building a career as a corrections officer at Colorado’s Limon Correctional Facility. He joined the Department of Corrections in 2017, inspired by a conviction that incarcerated people could be rehabilitated. His performance earned him two promotions—to Housing Sergeant in 2019 and to Visiting Sergeant in 2020.
His career was then derailed over a mandatory training module. The Department required its employees to complete Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion training, which defined “race” as a concept “created and used to justify social and economic oppression of people of color by white people.” It asserted that white people “perpetuate white supremacy” and are responsible for the “ideological oppression” of non-Caucasians. The materials included an unredacted racial slur used to characterize how white employees were presumed to think.
Young raised his objections through the Department’s formal complaint process. He was told the complaint about this state-mandated training would not be investigated because it failed to “establish reasonable cause to indicate the presence of discrimination.” Young resigned shortly afterward.
Young sued the Department under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, arguing the training created a racially hostile work environment. A federal district court dismissed the case, and in 2024, the Tenth Circuit affirmed.
Young has now petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case. His petition argues that an employer-sponsored racial hostility in the form of an employer-mandated training is enough to support a hostile-work-environment claim.
No employee should have to accept an environment that charges him with collective guilt for his race just to keep his paycheck—and no employer, especially the government, should be allowed to make racially hostile training a condition of employment.
What’s At Stake?
- No employer—especially the government—should be permitted to sponsor racially hostile trainings, even as part of so-called “equity” training.
