A white former Paramount executive has filed a discrimination lawsuit alleging that he was fired last year during a time when the company was pushing diversity.
Joseph Jerome, in a lawsuit filed on Friday in California federal court, challenges Paramount’s now-eliminated policies, some of which tied staffing goals and executive compensation to diversity, equity and inclusion goals. Some of those guidelines were rolled back earlier this year as the Trump administration targeted what it called “illegal DEI,” leading to a larger retreat from such initiatives in the private sector.
The lawsuit was filed after the Supreme Court earlier this year handed a modest victory to white Americans who allege workplace discrimination and two years after it struck down race-conscious admissions in higher education. Although it appears that those rulings haven’t led to a major uptick in lawsuits filed by majority groups, it’s becoming easier for them to make the case that they were discriminated against by their employers.
Jerome worked at Paramount from 1994 to 2024, most recently as senior vice president of business and legal affairs and production counsel to Entertainment Tonight. In his lawsuit, which also alleges age discrimination, he says he was one of three CBS Media Ventures (CMV) attorneys, all over 50 years old and white, to be terminated last year and replaced with younger employees from minority groups. Per the complaint, a 25-year-old Black law school graduate and ex-CMV intern took over Jerome’s position. He alleges that his two former colleagues were replaced by younger, Asian attorneys whose former jobs were eliminated due to corporate restructuring, though it doesn’t appear that they’ve sued over their terminations. Paramount didn’t immediately reply for comment.
At the beginning of last year, CMV had a roughly even split of white and minority lawyers, the lawsuit says. All of the attorneys fired in the division in 2024 were white and over 50, it adds.
Jerome details a November 2023 meeting held by then-CBS News president Wendy McMahon in which she complained about the older demographics of shows her division produced, directing staff to attract younger viewers by hiring younger staff members. Shortly after the meeting, Jerome was criticized for thinking “old” when discussing a prospective deal after he flagged a legal term that was misused.
In April, CBS Studios settled a lawsuit from a script coordinator for SEAL Team, who accused parent company Paramount of carrying illegal diversity quotas that discriminated against straight white men. The timing of the deal aligned with companies across Hollywood rethinking DEI policies, with Paramount pointing to federal mandates that “require changes in the way our company approaches inclusion moving forward.”
Following the pivot, the Supreme Court in June sided with a straight woman who lost promotions to gay workers. She had alleged a violation of a federal civil rights law that forbids discrimination on the basis of sex and race, among other characteristics. That law doesn’t treat members of majority groups differently but courts have adopted something called the “background circumstances” rule, which requires them to go a step beyond minority groups in proving discrimination in the absence of direct evidence for their cases to proceed. It was struck down, eliminating an obstacle for those lawsuits to get to trial.
Still, the legality of corporate diversity policies remain unchanged, though they’re on murky ground in instances they explicitly tie staffing goals to DEI goals, among other things. Many corporations in recent years have used shifted to using read-between-the-lines placeholders like “underrepresented” or “underserved” or “unique perspectives.”