A Coca-Cola distributor in Connecticut did something radical last year. They gathered 250 women — 15 percent of their workforce — in a ballroom for a day of speakers, team-building, and honest conversation. The theme was “Embrace Your Authenticity.”
The federal government is now suing them for it.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed the first-ever lawsuit targeting a corporate DEI program, claiming the women’s networking event was illegal discrimination against male employees. Let that land for a second. Two hundred and fifty women in a male-dominated industry carved out a single day to talk about their shared challenges — and a man who wasn’t there filed a complaint.
Someone reading this is already drafting the email to cancel their women’s forum.
Don’t.
Not yet. Read this first.
There is a term in law enforcement: lawful but awful. It describes a use of force that was technically permitted under policy but didn’t need to happen. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. The law sets the ceiling. Judgment is supposed to set the floor. When officers stopped using judgment and just pointed at policy, people got hurt — and the profession paid for it in trust for decades.
The same thing is happening in your organization right now. The climate is charged. A lawsuit lands in the news. Your lawyer forwards it with a terse note. And suddenly the policy becomes the answer to every question, the legal department becomes the moral compass, and somewhere in that transaction, your leadership disappears.
Here’s what I want to call that: cowardice.
Not caution. Not prudence. Cowardice.
I learned this distinction as a commander. A young officer on my team — a divorced father of twins — lost the mother of his children to suicide. She was his ex-wife, which meant the union contract was unambiguous: no bereavement leave. She wasn’t his spouse. Technically, legally, by every measure the policy recognized, he wasn’t entitled to a single day.
But he had two small children who had just lost their mother. And he needed to be with them.
I gave him the time.
My chief and fellow commanders were furious. I had violated the contract. I had set a precedent.
Good, I said.
Because the contract was written for a situation that wasn’t this situation. No policy, no matter how carefully drafted, can anticipate every human circumstance it will eventually face. That’s not a flaw in the policy — it’s the entire argument for judgment. Policies are guardrails, not substitutes for thinking. And leaders who hide behind them when the moment gets uncomfortable aren’t being careful. They’re being cowards.
The employment lawyer advising companies on this Coca-Cola case gave his clients one instruction: open every program to everyone. I understand the advice. I’m not interested in it. Because that’s not leadership — that’s liability management wearing leadership’s clothes.
The women who attended that Connecticut event are still using what they learned there. One of them said she uses the strategies to stay calm when dealing with an irate customer. She thought it should happen every year. She didn’t know it had triggered a federal lawsuit.
The men who weren’t in the room weren’t harmed. They weren’t passed over, underpaid, or overlooked. They simply weren’t included in one day’s conversation.
We are now in a moment where inclusion itself is being litigated.
Here’s what I know about organizations: when people feel seen and supported, they perform better. Full stop. That’s not a political statement — it’s human nature. Women in a male-dominated industry talking to each other about how to navigate it isn’t a threat to anyone. It’s an organization trying to retain talent it worked hard to recruit.
And some leaders will use that litigation as permission to stop doing the right thing.
Don’t be that leader.
Before you cancel the forum, dissolve the mentoring program, or quietly let the initiative die — ask yourself three questions. Am I doing the right thing for my people? At the right time? For the right reasons?
If the answer is yes to all three, move forward. Unapologetically.
Your lawyer is not your conscience. Your policy manual is not your character. And the most cowardly thing a leader can do is hide behind both of them when the moment demands courage.
The lawsuit won’t prevail. It’s not meant to. It’s meant to scare you. It just has to make you the one who cancels the conference, kills the program, and tells your people — without ever saying the words — that their belonging is negotiable.
Don’t give it that power.
