Marathon Petroleum's DEI Employment Practices: What the Company's Own Documents Show — and What They Mean for Employees

Published August 16, 2026 · Last updated August 21, 2026 · By Fett Law — Michigan Employment Discrimination Attorneys

Marathon Petroleum Corporation, the largest U.S. oil refiner, documented three categories of demographic employment practices in its own 2019–2022 reports: a diversity metric tied to executive and employee bonus pay, race- and sex-conscious candidate slates and recruiting, and numeric BIPOC and women hiring goals with published results. Similar practices were the basis of IBM's $17 million False Claims Act settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice in April 2026.

Key facts

Did Marathon Petroleum tie bonus pay to diversity targets?

The company's 2020 Sustainability Report announced the linkage:

"To support our commitment to creating a more diverse workforce and to hold ourselves accountable, we set company goals designed to drive our strategy to increase representation of women, Black, Indigenous and people of color in our workforce. In April 2021, we were the first U.S. independent downstream energy company to link executive and employee compensation to DE&I metrics." — Marathon Petroleum, Sustainability Report 2020, p. 34 (source)

The 2021 report spelled out the mechanics — an "ESG metric" worth 20% of the annual cash bonus, with DE&I as one of four 5% components, scored on the percentage of external hires who were women or BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color):

"In 2021, we introduced a diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) component — making us the first U.S. independent downstream energy company to link improving diversity representation to compensation, in the same way we led the industry in linking GHG intensity reductions to compensation. Our ESG metric, which includes DE&I, GHG intensity and environmental and safety performance components, is weighted at 20% of our annual cash bonus program." — Marathon Petroleum, Sustainability Report 2021, p. 7 (source). The same page shows the DE&I component (5%, "percent of external hires") with a 2021 target of 30% women and 30% BIPOC, and states the metric "measures our effectiveness toward reaching our five-year Representation Goals with respect to women and Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC)."

The 2022 report's CEO letter confirmed the metric covered both employees and executives:

"As part of our efforts to maintain a competitive workforce and reflect the diversity of our communities, we implemented a diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) metric tied to employee and executive compensation. Our goal for 2022 was for external hires to represent at least 30% BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) and 26% women." — Marathon Petroleum, 2022 Sustainability Report, p. 3 (source)

In plain terms: for the 2021 and 2022 bonus years, a slice of every bonus-eligible Marathon Petroleum employee's annual cash bonus — from the CEO down — depended in part on whether the company hit racial and gender percentages in its external hiring. When pay across a company rides on the demographic makeup of new hires, applicants and hiring managers have a direct interest in how that pressure was applied to individual decisions.

A July 2025 investigation by City Journal, quoting what it describes as a 2021 all-staff email from then-CEO Michael Hennigan announcing the change, reported an additional detail: according to the article, the same bonus redesign that added the DE&I component removed the "Marathon Safety Performance Index" metric from bonus calculations. In a statement quoted in the article, Marathon said its hiring, talent development and advancement outcomes "were and continue to be merit-based." These are the article's characterizations and the company's response, not findings of any court. (City Journal, July 24, 2025.)

Did Marathon Petroleum use race- and sex-conscious slates and recruiting?

The 2020 report's "Increasing Representation" strategy panel lists, verbatim:

"Balanced slates … Focused external recruitment … Black, Indigenous & People of Color (BIPOC) and female campus initiatives to recruit interns … Employee Network Groups" — with a companion "Measurement and Accountability" panel listing "Scoring and performance … Succession planning … Participation in federal compliance programs … Bonus metric." — Marathon Petroleum, Sustainability Report 2020, p. 34, "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Strategy" (source)

The 2021 and 2022 reports carried the practice forward in near-identical language, listing as a near-term action under "Build a Diverse Workforce":

"Streamlining our approach to managing diverse candidate slates" and "Establishing new relationships with diversity recruiting partners." — Marathon Petroleum, Sustainability Report 2021, p. 38 (source); repeated in the 2022 Sustainability Report, p. 26 (source)

What a slate practice means operationally: before a hiring decision is made, the pool of candidates presented to the decision-maker is composed with demographic categories in mind. The City Journal article goes further, quoting an employee who — according to the article — said that a minority candidate had to be on the shortlist for any job, and that "when you weren't choosing a minority, you had to have written justification for why they were not picked." That is an allegation from press reporting, attributed to an unnamed employee, and has not been tested in court. (City Journal, July 24, 2025.)

Did Marathon Petroleum set racial and gender hiring goals?

"Our goal for 2021 was for external hires to represent at least 30% BIPOC and 30% women. We exceeded the BIPOC goal with 32% representation, but fell short of our women goal with only 23% representation. … For 2022, we have set a goal for external hires to represent at least 26% women and 30% BIPOC." — Marathon Petroleum, Sustainability Report 2021, p. 38 (source)

"Our goal for 2022 was for external hires to be comprised of at least 30% BIPOC and 26% women. We exceeded the BIPOC goal with 32% result but fell short of our women goal with only 19% result." — Marathon Petroleum, 2022 Sustainability Report, p. 26 (source)

These were not aspirations detached from consequences: as shown above, the same reports state the goals were the measuring stick for the DE&I component of the bonus program, and the 2021 report highlighted progress "hiring women and BIPOC candidates for senior management roles," naming specific vice-president and general-manager positions. For balance, the 2022 report adds a footnote that the metrics "are aspirational in nature and achieving them will at all times be consistent with our Equal Employment Opportunity Policy" (2022 Sustainability Report, p. 26 n.1). Whether practice matched that caveat is exactly the kind of question employees and applicants with first-hand knowledge can answer.

One category found at some peer companies is not documented here: Marathon Petroleum's reports do not describe employment programs whose eligibility was restricted by race or sex. Its Employee Network Groups are described as using "an ally or supporter model so no one is excluded" (Sustainability Report 2021, p. 42).

How Marathon Petroleum's DEI program changed, 2019–2026

Why these practices matter legally

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employers from making employment decisions because of race or sex — and it protects every race and both sexes. Two recent Supreme Court decisions sharpened that rule. In Muldrow v. City of St. Louis (2024), the Court held that a plaintiff challenging a discriminatory change in the terms or conditions of employment need show only some harm, not a "significant" disadvantage. In Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services (2025), the Court unanimously rejected the rule that majority-group plaintiffs must meet a higher evidentiary bar. Separately, 42 U.S.C. § 1981 prohibits race discrimination in the making and enforcement of contracts — including employment — and carries its own four-year window with no agency filing requirement. (Statutes: Title VII, § 1981.)

For companies that do business with the federal government, a second layer arrived on April 10, 2026, when International Business Machines Corporation paid $17,077,043 to resolve allegations — under the Justice Department's Civil Rights Fraud Initiative, in DOJ's first False Claims Act settlement of its kind — that it certified compliance with federal anti-discrimination requirements while operating DEI practices including diversity-linked bonus compensation, diverse interview slates, and demographic goals (DOJ press release). Those categories overlap with the three practice categories documented in Marathon Petroleum's own reports. The parallel fact on the nexus side: federal procurement records list Marathon Petroleum Company LP as a Defense Logistics Agency fuel supplier — including naval distillate deliveries under DLA Energy contracts — with more than $354 million in Department of Defense payments in the year through October 2025, according to federal spending data.

To be clear about what is and is not established: no court or agency has found that Marathon Petroleum's practices violated any law, and the IBM settlement itself resolved allegations without an admission of liability. But practices like those documented above — bonus pay tied to hiring demographics, demographically managed candidate slates, and numeric race- and sex-based hiring goals — are precisely the categories of potentially illegal DEI practices that can give rise to liability under Title VII and § 1981, and, for companies selling to the federal government, potential False Claims Act exposure.

Were you affected by these practices at Marathon Petroleum?

If you worked at Marathon Petroleum — or applied there — between 2020 and 2025, the documented practices above may have touched your career in ways worth examining:

• You applied or were passed over for a job while the company was measuring itself — with bonus money at stake companywide — on the percentage of new hires who were women or BIPOC.
• You were a candidate on, or kept off, a "balanced slate" — or interviewed in a process shaped by slate composition rather than your merits.
• You were a hiring manager, recruiter, or HR professional asked to meet hiring-demographic targets, document why a particular candidate was or wasn't selected, or manage slate composition — first-hand knowledge of how the goals were implemented.
• You have knowledge of how the DE&I bonus metric was scored and communicated inside the company during 2021–2022.

Because Marathon Petroleum sells fuel to the federal government, insiders with knowledge of demographic employment practices during the certification period may also have information relevant to a False Claims Act qui tam claim — a mechanism that lets individuals bring claims on the government's behalf and potentially share in any recovery. Qui tam complaints are filed under seal, so a whistleblower's identity is initially protected. Both Title VII and the False Claims Act prohibit retaliation against people who assert their rights or report violations.

If any of these fits, it costs nothing to find out where you stand — meet our DEI discrimination lawyers, or start below.

What could a claim against Marathon Petroleum be worth?

Whistleblower rewards under the False Claims Act

Under 31 U.S.C. § 3730(d), a qui tam whistleblower (called a "relator") is entitled to 15–25% of what the government recovers when the Justice Department intervenes in the case, and 25–30% when the relator litigates without government intervention. For scale: on a settlement the size of IBM's $17,077,043, the intervened-case whistleblower share would be roughly $2.6 million to $4.3 million. And because False Claims Act recoveries are built on treble damages plus per-claim penalties, recoveries against very large government suppliers can run substantially higher.

Damages in individual discrimination cases

Back pay and front pay are uncapped under Title VII. Compensatory and punitive damages under Title VII are capped by employer size — $300,000 for employers with more than 500 employees, the bracket Marathon Petroleum occupies — but race claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1981 carry no damages caps at all, which is one reason race discrimination cases are often pleaded under it, and many state civil-rights statutes (including Michigan's Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, which covers Marathon Petroleum's Detroit refinery) are likewise uncapped. Prevailing plaintiffs generally recover attorney's fees on top. For a sense of what employment discrimination cases can produce, Fett Law's own results include a $10.5 million race and age discrimination class action against Ford Motor Company, a $2 million disability harassment result, and a $1.6 million racial harassment result. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Class action potential

Class actions are built on a single policy applied to many people — and the practices documented above were companywide by design: one bonus formula covering every bonus-eligible employee, one set of hiring goals covering all external hires, one slate approach managed centrally. Historic employment-discrimination class settlements show the scale such cases can reach: Coca-Cola paid $192.5 million (2000), Texaco $176.1 million (1996), and Novartis $175 million (2010) to resolve class claims.

Every case depends on its own facts — these figures show the range the law makes possible, not a promise of any outcome. The fastest way to learn where your situation falls is to start a confidential intake or contact us.

Sources

Quotations were page-verified against the original PDFs. The 2020–2022 report PDFs were live at the URLs below on marathonpetroleum.com when this page was published, though no longer linked from the company's report archive; the 2019 report has been removed from the site.

• Marathon Petroleum, Sustainability Report 2019 (pub. July 2020) — removed from marathonpetroleum.com (original URL returns "not found"); rehosted copy preserved at JUST Capital (near-final draft) and via ResponsibilityReports.com
• Marathon Petroleum, Sustainability Report 2020 — PDF (pp. 34–35 cited)
• Marathon Petroleum, Sustainability Report 2021 — PDF (pp. 7, 38–39, 42 cited)
• Marathon Petroleum, 2022 Sustainability Report — PDF (pp. 3, 26 cited)
• Marathon Petroleum, 2023 Sustainability Report — PDF (pp. 25–26 cited)
• Marathon Petroleum, 2024 Sustainability Report — PDF; 2025 Sustainability Report — PDF; current archive page — Reports and Policies
• Christopher F. Rufo & Ryan Thorpe, "Did Marathon Petroleum Prioritize DEI Over Safety?", City Journal, July 24, 2025 — article
• U.S. Department of Justice, "IBM Pays $17 Million to Resolve Allegations of Discrimination Through Illegal DEI Practices" (Apr. 10, 2026) — press release
• USAspending.gov, Marathon Petroleum Company LP — recipient profile; DLA Energy naval distillate award — contract record
• Title VII, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2 — statute; 42 U.S.C. § 1981 — statute; False Claims Act, 31 U.S.C. §§ 3729–3733 — statute