Lockheed Martin Corporation has agreed to pay approximately $29.5 million to resolve allegations that it discriminated against employees based on race or sex while falsely certifying compliance with federal civil-rights laws as a government contractor. The Bethesda, Maryland-based defense giant's settlement includes $22 million paid to the United States and roughly $7.5 million set aside for more than 1,000 affected workers.
The two-part settlement was announced jointly by the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Equal Employment Commission, according to the Justice Department's announcement. Per that announcement, Lockheed Martin was alleged to have violated the False Claims Act through failures to comply with antidiscrimination requirements in its federal contracts, alongside allegations of discrimination against employees and applicants based on race or sex.
The $22 million payment resolves the False Claims Act allegations with the Justice Department, while the separate $7.5 million is earmarked for distribution to the affected workers under a negotiated agreement with the EEOC, the department's announcement states. That EEOC settlement is described in the same announcement as the largest class of workers to publicly recover under an EEOC settlement for alleged Title VII violations arising from or relating to a DEI program or practices.
A Commissioner's Charge Sparked the Case
The underlying dispute traces back to a 2025 commissioner's charge filed by EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas, who alleged that Lockheed Martin violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act through race discrimination against white employees in performance assessments and in bonus and other compensation decisions, according to the Justice Department. The announcement does not detail how the allegations were resolved into the final settlement terms or what, if any, admissions Lockheed Martin made as part of the agreement.
Part of a Wider Federal Push on Contractor Compliance
The Lockheed Martin settlement follows a string of similar actions against other major federal contractors. In April, the Justice Department announced that IBM would pay $17 million to resolve allegations involving employment practices tied to its DEI programs, a deal that law firm Ropes & Gray LLP described as the first public resolution under the Justice Department's Civil Rights Fraud Initiative. That initiative was formally established on May 19, 2025, by then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who has since been elevated to Acting Attorney General, per the same Ropes & Gray analysis.
Deloitte also reached a settlement with the government over comparable allegations, agreeing to pay $21.5 million to resolve claims that, from 2017 to the present, the firm falsely certified compliance with antidiscrimination conditions while engaging in discriminatory race- and sex-based employment practices, according to a separate Justice Department announcement. The evidence reviewed does not establish that the facts or terms of the Deloitte and IBM matters were identical to the allegations resolved in the Lockheed Martin settlement.
Taken together, the three settlements signal that federal contractors across multiple industries are facing heightened scrutiny over how their workplace policies intersect with the certifications they sign to do business with the government. For Lockheed Martin, one of the Pentagon's largest contractors, the $29.5 million resolution adds the company to a growing list of corporations now navigating this new wave of federal civil-rights enforcement.
