Chicago Bears Accused of Favoring Minority, Female Law Students

The Chicago Bears Football Club Inc. illegally passed over a White, male law student from DePaul University in favor of racial minorities and women for its Legal Diversity Fellowship program earlier this year, a new federal lawsuit alleges.

Officials for the professional American football team discriminated against Jonathan Bresser Jr. when they denied his application in January and said they’re considering “other applicants whose experience and qualifications more closely match [their] needs,” according to a complaint filed Tuesday in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

The lawsuit is the latest in a string of increasing legal challenges by conservative groups to stop corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives following last year’s US Supreme Court decision curtailing the use of race as a factor in college admissions.

Bresser, a first-year law student, insisted that he’s more than qualified for the position, pointing to his experience as a litigation paralegal managing approximately 125 cases in a variety of legal areas.

The only listed requirement on the fellowship program’s application he didn’t “plausibly” meet was for applicants to be a person or color and/or a female law student, the suit said. The Bears “engage in intentional race and sex discrimination when creating and circulating a job positing by which its very nature excluded Caucasian men as viable applicants,” it said.

This hiring practice unlawfully deprived Bresser of “his rights to contract on the basis of his race” in violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and other anti-bias laws, the suit said.

Bresser is seeking compensatory and punitive damages for race and sex bias, and a court order finding The Bears’ alleged actions amount to a “civil conspiracy to commit tortious acts.”

The Bears didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

Trent Law Firm PC represents Bresser.

The case is Bresser v. The Chicago Bears Football Club Inc., N.D. Ill., No. 1:24-cv-02034, complaint filed 3/11/24.