ExxonMobil hosted a discriminatory internship opportunity that was only open to applicants of Hispanic descent, which experts say may violate federal civil rights law.
The program, called the “Latinos On Fast Track” fellowship, is held in conjunction with the Hispanic Heritage Foundation and gives applicants the chance to receive a $1,000 educational grant, interview for jobs and internships in a corporate environment, and learn from engineers and scientists in a mentorship program.
A list of requirements on the application states that the “applicant must be of Hispanic descent,” barring would-be applicants who come from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. The organization previously referred to the program as the “Latinx On Fast Track” fellowship, employing woke terminology that is intended to avoid the grammatically masculine word, “Latino.”
David Bernstein, a professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, told The Daily Wire that ExxonMobil’s program could run afoul of federal law.
“Given that it has employment consequences (possibility of job interview), it likely violates Title VII, and it also likely violates the 1866 Civil Rights Act, also known as Section 198.”
The ExxonMobil fellowship program is one of several job and internship opportunities at major companies that feature discriminatory selection criteria. Companies across industries, from tech to finance and beyond, have implemented the discriminatory programs as part of a broader diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) agenda that could now come under fire from the Trump administration.
Several companies have hosted internship and fellowship programs that impose race-based selection criteria, as an ongoing Daily Wire investigative series reveals.
Oracle and IBM, two giants of the tech industry, both hosted internship opportunities that barred whites and Asians from applying. Another program from IBM barred male applicants, unless those men identified as women.
Robert Kraft’s company, best known for owning the New England Patriots, advertised a job posting that listed “BIPOC,” a term that means “black, indigenous, people of color,” as a job qualification.
McKinsey and Company hosted professional development trainings for black, Hispanic, and Asian professionals, with no option for whites. Many of the most prominent banks in the country have also hosted internships and professional development opportunities that appear to engage in anti-white discrimination.
Companies that have hosted discriminatory DEI programs could be in the hot seat after Trump’s inauguration.
David Pivtorak, a lawyer who has active cases against American Express for alleged racial discrimination against white employees, explained that the Department of Justice “has a panoply of remedies it can seek to address the discrimination that results from these DEI programs.”
Among these remedies are lawsuits, depositions of any executives involved in discriminatory DEI policies, and launching investigations to obtain “a wide variety of a company’s internal data and documents.”
The Justice Department could also issue a “consent decree,” which would allow it to “oversee a company’s operations for years to come,” a measure that Pivtorak says “has an extreme coercive effect.”
This, the lawyer says, could compel companies to drop the DEI agenda altogether.
“From a cost-benefit perspective, companies may decide that the hassle of maintaining DEI is just not worth it, especially since these are not profitable endeavors but are mostly there to keep a small contingent of vocal activists satisfied.”
Neither ExxonMobil nor the Hispanic Heritage Foundation responded to a request for comment.
