CBS sued by ‘SEAL Team’ writers for allegedly using racial quotas in hiring writers CBS Studios and parent company Paramount have been sued for allegedly using diversity quotas that discriminated against white, straight men in what could be the opening legal blow to efforts to promote diversity and inclusion in Hollywood following the Supreme Court’s ruling that struck down affirmative action. Brian Beneker, a script coordinator for SEAL Team, alleges in a lawsuit filed in California federal court on Wednesday that he was repeatedly denied writing jobs after implementing an “unlawful racial and gender balance policy” that promoted the hiring of “less qualified applicants who were members of more favored groups,” namely those who identify as marginalized, LGBTQ or women. He is seeking at least $500,000 in damages, as well as a court order making him a full-time producer on the series and barring him from continuing to use discriminatory hiring practices.
Beneker is represented by the America First Legal Foundation, a conservative group founded by Stephen Miller, a White House policy adviser under the Trump administration. The organization has filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against major companies, including Morgan Stanley, Starbucks and McDonald’s, over their diversity and hiring practices that allegedly violate civil rights laws. CBS, which declined to comment, is believed to be the first entertainment company in its sights.
The lawsuit follows the Supreme Court’s decision last year to strike down race-conscious admissions at colleges and universities in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. In that case, the group sued for alleged violations of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, which protects against government discrimination. While the ruling does not directly apply to companies, which are governed by separate federal and state anti-discrimination laws that do not allow employers to consider race in hiring decisions, several legal experts told The Hollywood Reporter to expect a wave of reverse discrimination lawsuits challenging diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the opinion, “Eradicating racism means eradicating all of it.”
In the complaint, Beneker, who has worked as a script coordinator for CBS’s SEAL Team since 2017 and has also written several episodes as a freelance writer, detailed instances in which he was allegedly passed over for staff writer positions in favor of black or female candidates, who he said were less experienced than him and often did not have a track record of writing.
When he asked why a black writer was hired instead of him in 2019, the show’s executive told him it was because CBS wanted a minority to meet racial quotas for its writers’ rooms. He was told that he “didn’t check any diversity boxes” as a straight, white man, according to the complaint.
Since 2020, when he was reportedly assured he would be hired as his next staff writer, Bedeker says CBS has brought in at least six more writers, all of them women.
“In Season 6 (in approximately May 2022), two female assistant writers, with no writing credits, were hired as staff writers,” the complaint states. “The first of these two hires was Black. The second identified as lesbian.”
The lawsuit argues that CBS’s hiring practices have “created a situation where white, heterosexual men need additional ‘qualifications’ (including military experience or prior writing credits) to be hired as writers when compared to their non-white, LGBTQ, or female counterparts.”
According to the complaint, CBS employs racial quotas. In a 2022 interview, CBS Entertainment Group CEO George Cheeks reportedly said he had set a goal that all writers rooms on the network’s primetime series would be at least 40 percent diverse for the 2021-22 season. He said 17 of the 21 shows met or exceeded that goal.
For the 2022-23 broadcast season, the network announced in 2020 that half of its writers would be non-white as part of a broader initiative to “more accurately reflect diversity on screen and behind the camera.”
