Accenture pays $25 million to settle DOJ diversity discrimination claims

Accenture pays $25 million to settle DOJ diversity discrimination claims

Tue, September 15, 2026 at 3:46 PM GMT+3 2 min read

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Accenture agreed to pay $25 million to resolve Justice Department allegations that it violated anti-discrimination requirements in federal contracts by factoring race and sex into hiring, promotion, and training decisions.

The settlement, signed by the DOJ and Accenture and made public on Monday, covers Accenture Federal Services, Accenture plc, and Accenture LLP. The DOJ alleged violations ran from 2017 to the present. The claims are allegations only, and no determination of liability has been made, the Justice Department said. Accenture denied engaging in discrimination.

"Opportunity and promotion in the workplace must be earned through merit," Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward Jr. said in a statement. "Today's resolution makes unmistakably clear that the Department will continue to aggressively pursue unconstitutional discriminatory employment practices."

According to the DOJ, Accenture Federal Services distributed monthly reports to business unit leaders that tracked the racial and gender composition of their teams, using a color-coding system to signal how closely each unit's makeup aligned with the company's internal demographic targets. The department alleged those reports drove changes in hiring based on race and sex — including a round of entry-level hiring at the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021 aimed at advancing racial representation targets.

The DOJ further alleged that Accenture Federal Services gave extra visibility to candidates who advanced the company's demographic goals during managing director promotion reviews, and maintained a separate pipeline of potential promotion candidates selected to further those goals.

The settlement also covers allegations that Accenture Federal Services ran training and mentoring programs with eligibility restricted by race or sex. One program, called Amplify to Elevate, ran from August 2022 to February 2025 and reserved participation based on race, the DOJ said.

An Accenture spokesperson told Reuters that the company was glad to move past the matter, citing the expense and burden that extended litigation would have imposed: "We have cooperated with the government's review, and we are pleased to put this matter behind us to avoid the costs and resource demands of prolonged litigation." The company maintained that it had acted in accordance with applicable laws and that signing the agreement carried no acknowledgment of wrongdoing.

The Accenture settlement is one of several the Trump administration has reached with major consulting and technology firms over diversity practices. The Accenture payout follows earlier resolutions in which Deloitte and IBM separately reached settlements with the DOJ — for $21.5 million and $17 million, respectively — over comparable diversity-related allegations, according to Reuters.