Bank of America's DEI Employment Practices: What the Company's Own Documents Show — and What They Mean for Employees

Published August 22, 2026 · Updated August 22, 2026 · By Fett Law — Michigan Employment Discrimination Attorneys

Bank of America Corporation's own published reports and SEC filings describe, from 2019 into early 2025, four categories of employment practice: diversity metrics built into executive and manager performance scorecards reviewed by the Board of Directors; demographically targeted recruiting pipelines; an enterprise-wide "aspirational goal" for workforce representation; and leadership and sponsorship programs described as being for women and "diverse" employees. 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 Bank of America tie executive and manager evaluations to diversity metrics?

The company put the Board-level mechanism in writing in its first Human Capital Management Report. Among the ways the Board holds management accountable, the report lists:

"Evaluating performance for executive officers across a range of factors, such as the manner in which results are achieved, accountability in driving a strong risk-management culture and a robust review of scorecards, including specific diversity metrics"— Bank of America, 2019 Human Capital Management Report, p. 6 (published November 2019) (source PDF)

The same report described how those metrics reached individual leaders:

"The management team sets the D&I goals of the company. Each management team member has action-oriented diversity targets. These targets are subject to our quarterly business review process, used as part of talent planning and included in scorecards reviewed by the Board. Management team members cascade goals to ensure commitment and accountability across the company…"— Bank of America, 2019 Human Capital Management Report, p. 7

Bank of America's then-Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer described the tracking cadence in the same document:

"To measure how our efforts are working, we track our workforce data meticulously. At least once a month, senior leaders receive updated scorecards tracking the representation of diverse talent at every level."— Cynthia Bowman, Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer, quoted in Bank of America, 2019 Human Capital Management Report, p. 8

The 2020 Human Capital Management Report repeated the Board-scorecard language verbatim (p. 8) and restated the management-team mechanism, changing "diversity targets" to "diversity goals" (p. 10). The practice continued into the SEC-filed record. Bank of America's 2021 proxy statement told shareholders:

"For over 20 years, our Global Diversity & Inclusion Council, chaired by our CEO and comprising of senior executives from every area of the company, has promoted diversity goal setting, which is embedded in our performance management system and occurs at all levels of the enterprise."— Bank of America, 2021 Definitive Proxy Statement (DEF 14A, filed March 8, 2021), p. 37 (SEC filing)

The 2022 proxy statement stated the point in a single sentence: "We consider achievement of diversity goals in performance management for managers." (DEF 14A, filed March 7, 2022.) And the 2022 Annual Report — published in 2023 — carried the mechanism forward:

"Each management team member has business-specific, action-oriented diversity goals that are included in their quarterly business review process, talent planning and scorecards reviewed by the Board. Management team members cascade these goals to help drive accountability for diverse representation and an inclusive culture across the company."— Bank of America, 2022 Annual Report, Human Capital Management Update, p. 50 (SEC copy)

What this meant operationally: at Bank of America, the people who decided who was hired, promoted and moved were themselves measured — quarterly, on scorecards the Board saw — partly on the demographic composition of the organizations they ran. Bank of America has never published a weighting for that component, so how much any individual leader's rating or pay turned on it is not a matter of public record. It is, however, exactly the kind of question that discovery in an employment case is designed to answer. If demographic pressure was applied to a specific hiring or promotion decision, the employee on the wrong end of it generally has no way to see that from the outside.

Did Bank of America require diverse slates in hiring and interviews?

What Bank of America did publish is the recruiting architecture. Its FY2023 Form 10-K states that the company has "practices in place for attracting diverse talent, including campus recruitment," and reports that "in 2023, 44 percent of our global campus hires were women and, in the U.S., 62 percent were people of color" (Form 10-K for fiscal year 2023, filed February 20, 2024). The Human Capital Management Reports describe the pipeline in more detail:

"Our campus recruitment initiatives and partnerships are fueling a pipeline of diverse talent to our company. We hire from more than 350 universities around the world to fill internship and full-time positions, including 16 Hispanic-Serving Institutions in key locations, including Puerto Rico, and 28 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)."— Bank of America, 2019 Human Capital Management Report, p. 12

On February 25, 2025, Bank of America filed its 2024 Form 10-K and annual report. Reuters reported the next day that the bank "will drop a practice of using 'diverse slates' in reviewing candidates and in interview panels" and would no longer maintain "aspirational" diversity goals in its regulatory filings; the same reporting noted that the annual report "switched out numerous references to the word 'diversity,' replacing them with 'talent' and 'opportunity,'" and that an internal human-resources group was being renamed from "diversity and inclusion" to "opportunity and inclusion" (Fortune, February 26, 2025; Banking Dive). A Bank of America spokesperson said: "We evaluate and adjust our programs in light of new laws, court decisions and, more recently, executive orders from the new administration."

These are press characterizations of a company decision, and Bank of America has not published the text of the discontinued slate practice. But the reporting matters for one reason in particular: a company does not announce that it is discontinuing a practice it never had. For an applicant, a demographically defined slate or interview panel cuts both ways — candidates outside the favored definitions may be competing for fewer real openings, and candidates inside them may be placed into interviews the employer never intended to be genuine.

Separately, Bank of America's hiring has drawn federal scrutiny before. On September 27, 2019, the U.S. Department of Labor announced that Bank of America had agreed to pay $4.2 million in back wages and interest under an early-resolution conciliation agreement resolving OFCCP allegations of hiring discrimination against African American, Hispanic and female applicants at locations in New Jersey, Florida, Georgia and Texas; the agreement also required the bank to retain a consultant for five years to evaluate hiring policies and procedures (U.S. Department of Labor news release). Conciliation agreements resolve allegations without an admission or finding of liability. The point here is jurisdictional: Bank of America's hiring practices sit squarely inside the federal-contractor compliance system.

Did Bank of America set representation goals for its workforce?

The 2022 Annual Report stated the goal directly, alongside the representation statistics offered as progress against it:

"We've made strong progress against our aspirational goal for our workforce to mirror the clients and communities we serve at all levels of the company."— Bank of America, 2022 Annual Report, Human Capital Management Update, p. 50

The FY2023 Form 10-K — a document signed and filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission — described the governance body that set and aligned those goals:

"Our Global Diversity and Inclusion Council, which has been in place for over 20 years, is chaired by our CEO and consists of senior executives from every line of business and region." … "The Council sponsors and supports business, operating unit and regional diversity and inclusion councils to align diversity and inclusion strategies and aspirational goals across the enterprise."— Bank of America, Form 10-K for fiscal year 2023, Item 1, Human Capital Resources (filed February 20, 2024)

Bank of America also published the numbers it was measuring itself against. Its 2023 workforce disclosures reported that 55% of its management team was "diverse" including 32% women; that people of color in executive and senior-level positions had increased 67% since 2015; and that representation of people of color in its top three management levels had increased 80% since 2015 (2023 Annual Report, pp. 56 and 61). Those are outcome statistics, not quotas. The legal significance of a representation goal turns not on the number itself but on whether it changed who got a job — and that is a factual question about individual decisions.

Did Bank of America run programs limited by race or sex?

Under the heading "Leadership investment," the 2019 and 2020 Human Capital Management Reports list, among the development programs offered "for leaders who show potential as future business and C-level executives":

"Women's Next Level Leadership Program: Provides assessments, strategies and tactics to help multicultural women in progressing their careers through an eight-month virtual development experience"

"Women's Executive Development Program: Leverages the faculty of Columbia Business School to engage, develop, retain and support the career advancement of high potential talent…"

"Diverse Leader Sponsorship Program: Pairs diverse rising talent with senior leader sponsors to increase the visibility and representation of diverse talent. The program includes development sessions, executive sponsorship and engagement opportunities."— Bank of America, 2020 Human Capital Management Report, p. 17 (source PDF); substantially the same list appears at p. 13 of the 2019 Human Capital Management Report

The 2022 Annual Report confirmed the sponsorship program was still running and described its eligibility in the company's own words:

"Executive development programs, including our Diverse Leader Sponsorship Program, targeting diverse high-potential/top-performing leaders"— Bank of America, 2022 Annual Report, Human Capital Management Update, p. 51

The company also maintained a set of executive councils organized around protected characteristics. Its 2023 Annual Report lists ten Diversity Leadership Councils, including the "Black Executive Leadership Council," the "Hispanic-Latino Executive Council," the "Asian Advisory Council," the "Arab Executive Advisory Council," the "Jewish Executive Advisory Council," the "Native American Advisory Council," the "LGBTQ+ Executive Leadership Council" and the "Investing in Women Council" (2023 Annual Report, p. 58). The reports describe the councils' function as, among other things, working "to drive diverse representation, discuss strategies to improve advocacy, sponsorship and retention, [and] address unique obstacles to career advancement."

Bank of America has not published eligibility rules for these programs, and the reports do not state that any employee was excluded from one because of race or sex. What the reports do establish is that sponsorship — access to senior leaders who decide who advances — was organized around demographic categories. Sponsorship is not a perk; in a large bank it is frequently the mechanism by which people are promoted.

Which Bank of America DEI documents were removed from its website?

The specific documents no longer retrievable at their published addresses include:

• 2020 GRI Content Index — formerly at about.bankofamerica.com/content/dam/about/report-center/esg/2020/2020-gri-content-index.pdf
• 2020 SASB Index ("Sustainability Accounting Standards Board Index 2020") — formerly at …/esg/2020/sustainability-account-standards-board-index-2020.pdf
• 2021 ESG Performance Data Summary and GRI Index — formerly at …/esg/2021/2021-esg-performance-data-summary-and-global-reporting-initiative-Index.pdf
• 2022 Performance Data Summary & GRI Index — formerly at …/esg/2022/BofA_2023_PDS_GRI_secured.pdf; this file was still live as of a June 7, 2025 web-archive capture

Those data summaries are where a bank publishes the granular workforce numbers — hiring, promotion, turnover and representation broken out by race and sex — that its narrative reports summarize. Fett Law retains copies of the 2020 GRI Content Index and the 2020 SASB Index. Archived captures of these files are indexed at the Wayback Machine (archive search).

Removal of a document from a website is not by itself evidence of wrongdoing, and companies retire old files routinely. It matters here for a practical reason: employees and applicants trying to understand what the bank's own numbers showed during the years they were passed over can no longer simply look it up.

How Bank of America's DEI program changed, 2019–2026

Why these practices matter legally

The four categories described above — evaluation tied to demographic metrics, race- or sex-conscious candidate selection, numeric or aspirational representation goals, and programs limited by protected traits — are the patterns that most often create employment-law exposure at large employers. Our general guide to illegal DEI practices explains each of them and where the legal line tends to fall.

Title VII protects everyone, in both directions

Title VII, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2, makes it unlawful for an employer "to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin" (statute). The statute draws no distinction between majority and minority groups.

Two recent Supreme Court decisions matter here. In Muldrow v. City of St. Louis (2024), the Court held that a Title VII transfer plaintiff need show only some harm to an identifiable term or condition of employment — not a "significant" or "material" disadvantage — lowering the threshold for what counts as an actionable job action. In Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services (2025), a unanimous Court rejected the "background circumstances" rule that some courts had used to require majority-group plaintiffs to make an extra showing before their discrimination claims could proceed (opinion). Together they mean that a white, male, or otherwise majority-group employee passed over under a demographically driven process faces the same legal standard as anyone else.

Section 1981 reaches race discrimination in employment contracts

42 U.S.C. § 1981 guarantees all persons the same right "to make and enforce contracts" regardless of race, and it reaches employment (statute). Section 1981 claims have a four-year limitations period, require no EEOC charge first, and are not subject to Title VII's damages caps.

Federal contractors and financial agents: the False Claims Act angle

On April 10, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that IBM would pay $17,077,043 to resolve allegations that it discriminated through DEI practices while holding federal contracts — the first settlement under DOJ's Civil Rights Fraud Initiative (DOJ press release). The theory is not that DEI programs are themselves fraud; it is that certifying compliance with federal anti-discrimination requirements while operating programs that make employment decisions turn on race or sex can create False Claims Act exposure.

The parallel fact for Bank of America is its federal position. Bank of America, N.A. is a designated financial agent of the United States Treasury, and Treasury's Bureau of the Fiscal Service reported paying it $11,166,300 in fiscal year 2025 for ACH Post Payment Services and the US Debit Card program (Financial Agent and Depositary Services Compensation, FY2025). The bank is separately a federal contractor subject to Executive Order 11246, as its 2019 OFCCP conciliation agreement reflects. Whether any False Claims Act theory would apply to Bank of America depends on facts that are not public — what was certified, to whom, and when. Nothing here asserts that Bank of America made a false certification or violated any law.

Nothing here is a finding

Every practice described on this page comes from Bank of America Corporation's own published documents or from attributed news reporting. No court or agency has found that Bank of America discriminated against anyone on the basis of these practices, and this page does not assert that it did. Whether a particular decision about a particular employee was unlawful depends on the facts of that decision.

Were you affected by these practices at Bank of America?

You may have a reason to talk to an employment discrimination lawyer if any of these describe you:

• You applied to Bank of America and were rejected, or given an interview that felt like a formality, during the years the bank was reported to be using diverse slates and diverse interview panels.
• You were passed over for a promotion or a move into a higher management level while your manager was carrying "action-oriented diversity goals" reviewed on a Board-level scorecard.
• You were not considered for the Diverse Leader Sponsorship Program, the Women's Next Level Leadership Program, the Women's Executive Development Program, or a comparable executive-development program, and you believe race or sex was the reason.
• You were a manager or HR professional at Bank of America and you saw how the diversity goals and scorecards were actually applied to individual hiring and promotion decisions.
• You have first-hand knowledge of what the bank certified to a federal agency about its employment practices while those practices were in place.

If you are worried about retaliation: Title VII § 704(a) makes it unlawful for an employer to retaliate against an employee for opposing discrimination or participating in a proceeding, and the False Claims Act's whistleblower provision, 31 U.S.C. § 3730(h), separately protects employees who take lawful steps to stop a false claim. False Claims Act qui tam complaints are filed under seal, which means the complaint is not initially served on the employer or made public.

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 Bank of America be worth?

Title VII. Back pay and front pay are uncapped. Compensatory and punitive damages combined are capped by 42 U.S.C. § 1981a(b)(3); for an employer with more than 500 employees — which Bank of America plainly is — the cap is $300,000 per complaining party. Attorney's fees are recoverable.

42 U.S.C. § 1981. For race claims, § 1981 carries no damages cap and a four-year limitations period, and requires no EEOC charge first. In a case involving a high earner or a long period of lost advancement, this is frequently the more valuable claim.

State law. Michigan's Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act allows three years to file, requires no agency filing, and imposes no statutory damages cap. Other states differ; the rule that applies depends on where you worked.

False Claims Act qui tam. If you have insider knowledge and bring a successful qui tam action, 31 U.S.C. § 3730(d) provides a relator's share of "at least 15 percent but not more than 25 percent of the proceeds" where the government intervenes, and "not less than 25 percent and not more than 30 percent" where it does not, plus fees and costs. For scale: the IBM settlement was $17,077,043.

A free intake is how you find out which of these, if any, fits your situation, and our overview of illegal DEI practices explains how these patterns are evaluated generally. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Sources

Every factual statement above about Bank of America Corporation traces to one of the following. Documents marked removed are no longer available at their published addresses.

• Bank of America, 2019 Human Capital Management Report: Being a Great Place to Work (published November 2019) — PDF (live, verified August 2026)
• Bank of America, 2020 Human Capital Management Report (published October 2020) — PDF (live)
• Bank of America, 2020 Annual Report — PDF
• Bank of America, 2021 Annual Report (Human Capital Management Update, pp. 38–51) — PDF
• Bank of America, 2022 Annual Report (Human Capital Management Update, pp. 42–57) — SEC copy
• Bank of America, 2023 Annual Report (Human Capital Management Update, pp. 46–61) — SEC copy
• Bank of America, Human Capital Management Update (standalone extract, March 2024) — PDF
• Bank of America, Form 10-K for fiscal year 2023 (filed February 20, 2024), Item 1 — Human Capital Resources — SEC filing
• Bank of America, 2021 Definitive Proxy Statement (DEF 14A, filed March 8, 2021) — SEC filing
• Bank of America, 2022 Definitive Proxy Statement (DEF 14A, filed March 7, 2022) — SEC filing
• Bank of America, 2020 GRI Content Index — removed from about.bankofamerica.com; copy retained by Fett Law; Wayback Machine captures
• Bank of America, 2020 SASB Index — removed; copy retained by Fett Law
• Bank of America, 2021 ESG Performance Data Summary and GRI Index; 2022 Performance Data Summary & GRI Index — removed
• Bank of America, Report Center (lists 2023+ only; "Additional historical disclosures available upon request") — link (verified August 2026)
• U.S. Department of the Treasury, Bureau of the Fiscal Service, Financial Agent and Depositary Services Compensation, FY2025 — PDF
• U.S. Department of Labor, "Bank of America Enters Into Early Resolution Conciliation Agreement With U.S. Department of Labor to Resolve Discrimination Violations" (September 27, 2019) — news release
• U.S. Department of Justice, "IBM Pays $17 Million to Resolve Allegations of Discrimination Through Illegal DEI Practices" (April 10, 2026) — press release
• Fortune, "Bank of America scraps diversity goals in latest Wall Street DEI retreat" (February 26, 2025) — article
• Banking Dive, "BofA, Wells, Truist de-emphasize DEI in annual filings" (February 26, 2025) — article
• ESG Dive, "BofA, Wells, Truist de-emphasize DEI in annual filings" — article
• Ames v. Ohio Dept. of Youth Services, 605 U.S. ___ (2025) — opinion; Muldrow v. City of St. Louis, 601 U.S. 346 (2024)
• Title VII, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2; damages caps, 42 U.S.C. § 1981a; 42 U.S.C. § 1981; False Claims Act, 31 U.S.C. § 3730; EEOC, Time Limits for Filing a Charge