There’s been an uptick in DEI-related lawsuits against companies since 2023, when the Supreme Court barred universities from considering race in the admissions process. That decision, coupled with a rise in anti-DEI actions from the Trump administration and activists, has led courts to consider the legality of DEI programs, including training and demographic goals.

It seems, however, that the tides may be changing. Some legal experts say that, in recent months, they’ve seen fewer new cases against employers, and some DEI professionals filing suits of their own.

For more on the anti-DEI lawsuits employers faced in 2025, and what the future may hold, keep reading here.—KP

In 2007, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a blistering dissent in a Title VII case brought by Lilly Ledbetter, a former supervisor at a Goodyear Tire and Rubber plant who discovered she was paid less than male colleagues in equal or less senior positions, and sued for sex discrimination.

The dissent touched upon the pervasive problem of secrecy that today’s pay transparency laws are trying to solve. “Pay disparities often occur, as they did in Ledbetter’s case, in small increments; cause to suspect that discrimination is at work develops only over time,” Ginsburg wrote. “Comparative pay information, moreover, is often hidden from the employee’s view. Employers may keep under wraps the pay differentials maintained among supervisors, no less the reasons for those differentials.”

By the time Colorado enacted a law requiring employers to share salary information with potential job seekers in 2019, policymakers had been wrestling with fair pay issues like this one for decades. At the federal level they sought to remedy them first with the Equal Pay Act of 1963, and later with the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which expanded the statute of limitations on discrimination claims like Ledbetter’s, removing a hurdle for employees bringing lawsuits.

Thanks to pay transparency laws that have been enacted in more than a dozen US states and Washington, DC, workers have access to much more information about how their employers pay, and why. But like the policies that came before them, these laws haven’t yet resulted in a meaningful narrowing of the gender pay gap—one key goal of the movement.

For more on why pay transparency hasn’t closed the gender pay gap, keep reading here.—CV

You can’t playlist your way to a better employee experience, but you can learn from someone who oversees culture at a company built on listening. SiriusXM’s Faye Tylee will share how to craft an environment where people feel heard, supported, and ready to stay for the encore.