November 6, 2025
A former white government is suing Paramount, alleging racial and age discrimination.
A white former Paramount government has filed a discrimination lawsuit alleging that he was fired final yr throughout a time when the corporate was pushing range.
In a lawsuit filed in California federal courtroom on Oct. 31, Joseph Jerome challenges Paramount’s now-defunct DEI insurance policies, which allegedly linked staffing objectives and government compensation to range metrics, in accordance with The Hollywood Reporter. Though a few of these pointers have been rolled again earlier this yr amid scrutiny of company DEI practices, Jerome alleges he was fired as a result of he isn’t an individual of coloration.
Jerome, a 30-year Paramount veteran from 1994 to 2024, most not too long ago served as senior vice chairman of enterprise and authorized affairs and manufacturing counsel to Leisure Tonight. In his lawsuit, which additionally alleges age discrimination, he claims he was one in every of three CBS Media Ventures (CMV) attorneys—throughout 50 and white—terminated final yr and changed with youthful, minority staff.
In response to Jerome’s swimsuit, a 25-year-old Black legislation faculty graduate and former CMV intern took his function, whereas his two former colleagues have been changed by youthful Asian attorneys whose earlier positions have been eradicated in a company restructuring, although they haven’t filed lawsuits over their terminations.
The lawsuit claims that at first of final yr, CMV’s authorized staff was roughly balanced between white and minority attorneys. It provides that each one legal professionals let go in 2024 have been white and over the age of fifty. Jerome references a November 2023 assembly led by then-CBS Information president Wendy McMahon, throughout which she reportedly expressed concern over the older demographics of her division’s exhibits and instructed employees to rent youthful staff to draw youthful viewers. Quickly after, Jerome claims he was criticized for pondering “outdated” when he raised a misused authorized time period in a potential deal.
The lawsuit comes after CBS Studios reached a settlement in April with a SEAL Workforce script coordinator who alleged that Paramount enforced unlawful range quotas that discriminated in opposition to straight white males. The settlement coincided with a broader Hollywood reevaluation of DEI insurance policies, with Paramount citing federal mandates that required modifications in its strategy to inclusion. Paramount joins different main media firms, together with Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery, in rolling again or rebranding DEI applications following a Trump administration government order focusing on DEI.
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