America First Legal files civil rights complaint against CrowdStrike over DEI practices

America First Legal has filed a civil rights complaint CrowdStrike over alleged racial and sexual discrimination in its diversity, equity, and inclusion practices.

The group filed a federal civil rights complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for “allegedly limiting, segregating, and classifying white and male employees for trainings and promotions in the name of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.”

A press release from the group pointed out nine employee resource groups with the company solely based on racial, sexual, and sexual orientation categories.

“CrowdStrike’s DEI leader specifically referenced efforts to use race as a basis for advancement in employment,” America First Legal Vice President Dan Epstein said in a statement. “Such a statement, in combination with CrowdStrike’s demonstrated intent to use racial balancing in hiring as well as its own public financial disclosures emphasizing its values in favor of racial discrimination over the true diversity of thought and opinion, creates a substantial likelihood of unlawful activity.”

The letter sent to CrowdStrike holds that the company’s “race, color, and sex obsession is unlawful” and that its conduct “indicates that the Company lacks effective internal controls and suggests an inappropriate disregard of your fiduciary duties to CrowdStrike and its shareholders.”

The letter concludes by demanding that the company immediately cease all DEI practices, retain all documents related to them, and “retain an independent counsel for a full investigation of and a report on the events and circumstances behind management’s decision” to institute DEI practices.

CrowdStrike, one of the world’s largest cybersecurity companies, came into national focus last week when it was behind a global tech outage, which crippled infrastructure and flights for an extended period.

An incident report released Wednesday found that a bug in a quality-control tool was behind the problem.