The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said Wednesday that it is investigating Nike for allegedly discriminating against white workers. <\/p>\n
The agency that polices discrimination in the workplace filed an action in federal court in Missouri to compel the publicly traded athletic shoe and apparel giant to produce information in response to a subpoena the agency served on the company last fall, according to court filings reviewed by NBC News. <\/p>\n
The EEOC said it was investigating allegations that the company\u2019s mentorship and training programs and its personnel decisions gave nonwhite employees preferential treatment that amounts, according to the agency, to discrimination against white workers. <\/p>\n
Nike is the world\u2019s largest sportswear and apparel company, with nearly 80,000 employees and revenues of around $51.4 billion in 2024. <\/p>\n
The allegations were not made by workers at Nike who believed they had been the targets of unfair treatment, however, as is typically the case in EEOC investigations.<\/p>\n
Instead, the court filings show that this case stems from a commissioner\u2019s charge brought by then-commissioner Andrea Lucas herself in May 2024, and based on publicly available information such as Nike\u2019s own annual \u201cImpact Reports\u201d and information on its public website. <\/p>\n
The EEOC\u2019s request that a judge enforce the subpoena is the latest instance of the Trump administration using a federal agency that is typically charged with preventing and responding to discrimination against nonwhite Americans, and deploying it instead to protect what it says are the underrepresented interests of white people.<\/p>\n
Nike has objected in court to many of the EEOC\u2019s demands to documents over the last several months, arguing that they are vague, overly broad, and seek information dating back to well before the period in question.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis feels like a surprising and unusual escalation,\u201d a Nike spokesperson said. \u201cWe have had extensive, good-faith participation in an EEOC inquiry into our personnel practices, programs, and decisions and have had ongoing efforts to provide information and engage constructively with the agency.\u201d<\/p>\n
The spokesperson added that Nike has shared \u201cthousands of pages of information and detailed written responses\u201d in connection with the agency\u2019s inquiry and said the company is in the \u201cprocess of providing additional information.\u201d Nike will respond to the agency\u2019s petition, the spokesperson said. <\/p>\n
Lucas was appointed chair of the EEOC by President Donald Trump in November 2025 after serving as a commissioner since 2020, when the president nominated Lucas to the agency.<\/p>\n
The agency said it filed the subpoena enforcement action after \u201cfirst attempting to obtain voluntary compliance with its investigative requests.\u201d <\/p>\n\n
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said Wednesday that it is investigating Nike for allegedly discriminating against white workers. The agency that polices discrimination in the workplace filed an action in federal court in Missouri to compel the publicly traded athletic shoe and apparel giant to produce information in response to a subpoena the agency <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":36756,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-36794","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}