By Daniel Wiessner

March 26 (Reuters) - A federal judge in Michigan on Wednesday refused to dismiss a lawsuit accusing IBM of forcing out a white male consultant in order to further its goals of building a more diverse workforce.

U.S. District Judge Hala Jarbou in Lansing, Michigan, said plaintiff Randall Dill's claims that IBM set specific targets for the racial and gender composition of its workforce and offered financial incentives for his supervisors and other executives to achieve them were enough to allow the case to move forward.

"Taken as true, Dill's allegations plausibly support an inference that IBM improperly considers race or gender as a factor in employment-related decisions," wrote Jarbou, who was appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term.

Jarbou denied IBM's motion to dismiss the 2024 lawsuit, allowing the case to move toward trial.

IBM did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Andrew Block of America First Legal, the conservative group representing Dill, said: “We look forward to continuing to litigate this case and fight for justice on behalf of our client."

America First Legal was founded by Stephen Miller, a top adviser to Republican President Donald Trump, and has filed a series of lawsuits and complaints claiming companies' diversity policies are unlawful. In one of those cases, a federal judge in Los Angeles last year rejected CBS' motion to dismiss a white screenwriter's claims that the network's diversity efforts led it to deny him a staff position on the show "SEAL Team."

Trump has barred federal agencies and government contractors from adopting workplace diversity, equity and inclusion policies and has said his administration will investigate companies, schools and nonprofits that implement them.

And the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces workplace anti-discrimination laws, has warned that many common workforce DEI initiatives such as diversity training may be unlawful.

Civil rights advocates say DEI initiatives are necessary to remedy historic discrimination and for employers to comply with anti-discrimination laws. Trump and his supporters claim diversity policies are discriminatory and erode merit-based decisionmaking.

Dill says he was placed on a performance improvement plan in July 2023 despite receiving only positive feedback in his seven years as a senior managing consultant at IBM. The plan was impossible to complete and Dill was fired in 2023, according to his complaint.

Dill says IBM had race and sex quota systems that guided hiring and promotion decisions and that it based executives' bonuses in part on whether they had met those goals, giving them a strong incentive to push out white men like him.

IBM has said that it does not use hiring quotas and never has, and that Dill's claims are baseless. In moving to dismiss the lawsuit, the company argued that Dill had exaggerated the scope of its incentive program for executives and had failed to identify female or non-white coworkers who received preferential treatment.

Jarbou on Wednesday said there was a plausible connection between the incentive plan and Dill's firing, and that on a motion to dismiss details about other workers were irrelevant.

"At this stage, Dill has provided enough facts to state viable race and gender discrimination claims against IBM," she wrote.

The case is Dill v. International Business Machines Corp, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan, No. 1:24-cv-00852.

For Dill: Andrew Block of America First Legal; Christopher Berry of Smith Haughey Rice & Roegge

For IBM: Alison Furtaw of Dykema Gossett; David Foster of Hogan Lovells; and Emily Petroski of Jackson Lewis

Read more:

IBM fired white worker to fulfill diversity goals, lawsuit claims

Ex-Trump aide's group files complaints over judges' diversity pushes

Ex-Trump administration officials target corporate diversity efforts

Despite Trump order, abandoning DEI could land companies in legal trouble

What is DEI, a practice Trump is trying to dismantle?

CBS must face white screenwriter's lawsuit over diversity policies

EEOC, signaling crackdown on DEI under Trump, says some policies are illegal

(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York)