A federal judge dismissed a second lawsuit on Monday brought by a former Colorado Department of Corrections employee who was offended by an equity training module and alleged it created a hostile work environment.

In 2023, U.S. District Court Judge Nina Y. Wang dismissed Joshua F. Young’s first lawsuit on the grounds that he failed to show how a computer-based module and related race-conscious materials led to severe or pervasive harassment within the prison system. Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit upheld Wang’s order.

However, the three-judge appeals panel embedded within its decision several critiques of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives (known as DEI or EDI). The opinion’s author, Judge Timothy M. Tymkovich, touched on potential features that “may evolve into a plausible hostile workplace claim.” Young, seeing the roadmap from Tymkovich, filed an amended complaint seeking to beef up his case against his former employer.

“Mr. Young has responded to the Tenth Circuit’s admonitions,” wrote his attorneys with the Mountain States Legal Foundation.

But Wang maintained the latest version of Young’s lawsuit still fell short of establishing the single training module created an “objectively severe hostile work environment” that was “infected” with racial discrimination.

“Plaintiff may have sufficiently alleged that the EDI training interfered with his work performance based on his subjective reaction to it,” she wrote in a Jan. 27 order, but “he does not allege sufficient objective facts about his workplace to establish that his workplace ‘would be deemed hostile by a reasonable employee under the same or similar circumstances.'”

Wang’s decision came amid a rapid effort within the Trump administration to shut down diversity programming within the executive branch and investigate such initiatives in workplaces across the country. Last week, President Donald Trump signed executive orders condemning “illegal and immoral” DEI efforts, which prompted the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Colorado to pull out of a federal judge’s longstanding diversity internship program.

Young’s lawsuit echoed Trump’s characterization of DEI programming, alleging the training module he experienced in 2021 featured “extremely biased and inflammatory content.”

Young, a White man from Colorado Springs, alleged he was forced to resign from his job as a sergeant in the corrections department after suffering “severe and pervasive” discrimination from a DEI training module. The materials the department made available to employees included:

• a glossary of terms such as “white fragility” and “BIPOC“

• a video about redlining, which is a historical form of housing discrimination

• a message that “Caucasians have a feeling of superiority because of their racism”

“Young suffered personal stress based on the fact that his supervisors and even their supervisors — essentially the highest officials in the Department of Corrections — were insisting that he review, believe, and live by these trainings, and that his colleagues do the same,” his lawyers wrote.

Wang initially dismissed Young’s lawsuit due to the insufficiency of his allegations. While his appeal before the 10th Circuit was pending, Young filed another, highly similar lawsuit also assigned to Wang. After seeking input from the parties about whether she should let Young’s second lawsuit proceed, Wang decided to put the second suit on ice to give the 10th Circuit time to process the appeal.

Ultimately, the three-judge appellate panel agreed with Wang’s assessment that Young’s allegations did not rise to the level of a hostile work environment. But Tymkovich, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote about how the “troubling” content of the training module could amount to a viable legal claim.

“The rhetoric of these programs sets the stage for actionable misconduct by organizations that employ them,” Tymkovich wrote for himself and Judge Joel M. Carson III, a first-term Trump appointee. “Taken seriously by managers and co-workers, the messaging could promote racial discrimination and stereotypes within the workplace.”

Judge Scott M. Matheson Jr., the lone Democratic appointee on the panel, warned that he did not think it appropriate to comment on how other DEI programs could be challenged going forward.

Back in Wang’s court, Young added new allegations about how the training module negatively affected him, in some cases quoting Tymkovich directly. Among other things, Young alleged he “was instructed to treat his colleagues differently based on their race and/or sex” and that “the race-based implications of the training made him second-guess his actions, leading to an unsafe working environment.”

Once again, the government sought to dismiss Young’s complaint.

Young “does not identify with specificity a single instance in which the EDI training led to a real-world conflict with a coworker, supervisor, visitor, or inmate,” wrote the Colorado Attorney General’s Office. “Instead, he has alleged that he watched the EDI training once, got upset, and quit.”

Wang, a Joe Biden appointee, acknowledged Young’s effort to respond to the 10th Circuit’s opinion. But she concluded there were no specific allegations indicating Young was expected to change his conduct in response to the training module or that any of his supervisors even spoke to him about it.

“And even taking these allegations as true — that the EDI training affected how Plaintiff performed his job and that Plaintiff’s hesitancy could have created an unsafe working environment — they are insufficient by themselves to plausibly allege that the workplace was so permeated with discriminatory ridicule and harassment that a reasonable employee would view the workplace as hostile,” she wrote.

The case is Young v. Colorado Department of Corrections et al.