The largest discrimination lawsuit settlements in U.S. history cluster in the $175 million to $215 million range and include Goldman Sachs ($215 million for gender discrimination), Coca-Cola ($192 million for racial discrimination), Texaco ($176 million for racial discrimination), Novartis ($175 million for gender discrimination), and Sterling Jewelers ($175 million for gender pay discrimination). Jury verdicts have reached much higher — a Los Angeles jury awarded $464.5 million against Southern California Edison in 2022 — but federal damage caps and appellate review often cut those numbers down sharply before any money changes hands. The settlements, negotiated with full knowledge of those legal ceilings, usually represent more money actually paid out than the splashier verdicts that make headlines.
Biggest Racial Discrimination Settlements
Two cases from the corporate world set the modern benchmark, and both still rank at the top decades later.
Texaco agreed in November 1996 to pay $176.1 million to settle Roberts v. Texaco, a class action brought on behalf of at least 1,500 Black salaried employees. The deal included $115 million in cash damages and pay raises of at least 10 percent for roughly 1,400 salaried Black employees. The case drew national attention after recordings surfaced of senior executives denigrating Black employees and discussing destroying evidence related to the lawsuit. Texaco agreed to create a seven-member equality and tolerance task force to overhaul its hiring, promotion, and diversity practices, and the EEOC retained the right to inspect company premises and records to monitor compliance. The case closed in 2003 after the supervision period ended.{1Los Angeles Times. Texaco Settles Race Bias Suit}{2Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. Roberts v. Texaco, Inc.}
Coca-Cola followed with a bigger number. In June 2001 a federal court approved a $192 million settlement in Abdallah v. Coca-Cola Co., a class action involving roughly 2,200 Black employees who alleged systemic discrimination in pay, promotions, and performance evaluations. About $103 million went to cash damages and back pay, with sweeping changes to the company’s personnel policies attached. A court-appointed task force monitored diversity and promotion practices for five years and issued its final report in December 2006.{3Business & Human Rights Resource Centre. Coca-Cola Lawsuit Re Racial Discrimination in USA}{4Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. Abdallah v. Coca-Cola Co.}
A more recent racial discrimination case shows how dramatically numbers can move between a verdict and a final payment. Owen Diaz, a Black former contract worker at Tesla’s Fremont, California factory, won a $137 million jury verdict in 2021 after alleging he was subjected to racial slurs and harassment the company failed to address. A judge reduced the award to $15 million, which Diaz rejected. A second jury in 2023 awarded $3.2 million. The parties reached a confidential settlement in March 2024.{5CNBC. Tesla Settles Racial Discrimination Lawsuit}
Biggest Gender Discrimination Settlements
Gender discrimination has produced the largest and most recent settlements. In November 2023, a federal judge granted final approval to a $215 million settlement in Chen-Oster v. Goldman Sachs, resolving claims by nearly 3,000 female associates and vice presidents. The 13-year litigation challenged the bank’s “360 review” and “quartiling” metrics, which plaintiffs said systematically placed women in lower rankings. Goldman also agreed to modify its promotion and evaluation practices and retain an outside labor economist to monitor pay gaps.{6Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP. Court Grants Final Approval to Historic $215 Million Settlement in Gender Discrimination Case Against Goldman Sachs}
Novartis holds a slightly older but still significant record. A Manhattan jury in May 2010 awarded a class of roughly 5,600 to 6,200 female sales representatives $250 million in punitive damages and $3.3 million in compensatory damages in Velez v. Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp., finding systemic discrimination in pay, promotions, and treatment related to pregnancy leave. The parties then negotiated a $175 million settlement, approved by Judge Colleen McMahon on November 30, 2010. Of that sum, $22.5 million was earmarked for systemic reforms within Novartis. A court-appointed monitor oversaw compliance until the case closed in April 2014.{7Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. Velez v. Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation}{8Sanford Heisler Sharp LLP. Novartis Pharmaceutical Gender Discrimination Class Action}
Sterling Jewelers, parent of Kay Jewelers and Jared, settled a long-running gender pay and promotion case for $175 million in 2022. About 68,000 women alleged the company paid them less than similarly situated male employees and denied them promotions. The case was unusual because Sterling’s employment agreements required arbitration rather than court proceedings. An arbitrator granted final approval in November 2022, and all proceeds have since been distributed.{9Signet Jewelers. Sterling Jewelers Cohen Milstein Class Action Litigation Agreement}{10Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC. Sterling Jewelers}
Google agreed to pay $118 million in 2022 to settle Ellis v. Google LLC, a class action alleging gender pay discrimination affecting approximately 15,500 female employees in California across 236 job titles. The company also had to hire an independent consultant to review its hiring and pay processes and an external monitor to oversee implementation for three years. A San Francisco Superior Court judge granted final approval in October 2022.{11Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. Ellis v. Google}{12New York Times. Google Discrimination Settlement Women}
Riot Games, the company behind “League of Legends,” reached a $100 million settlement in 2022 covering roughly 1,065 female employees and 1,300 female contract workers employed between November 2014 and December 2021. The claims included systemic gender discrimination, sexual harassment, and retaliation. At least $80 million was dedicated to compensating workers. Riot agreed to three years of independent oversight, annual gender-equity audits, and a requirement to make 40 full-time positions available to qualified class members who had previously worked as temporary contractors. An earlier $10 million settlement attempt had been rejected after the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing objected to the amount.{13California Civil Rights Department. Riot Games Settlement Press Release}{14Axios. Riot Games Settlement Approval}
Biggest Age and Disability Discrimination Cases
A Los Angeles jury returned what has been reported as the largest age discrimination verdict in U.S. history in December 2025: $103 million against Liberty Mutual Insurance. Joy Slagel, a 30-year employee, alleged the company manufactured a pretext for her firing to push out older, higher-paid workers after she complained about hiring practices that favored younger employees. The award included $20 million in non-economic compensatory damages and $83 million in punitive damages. The case had been dismissed on summary judgment with $70,000 in sanctions against Slagel before an appellate court reversed that ruling in 2023 and allowed it to proceed.{15Los Angeles Times. Liberty Mutual $103 Million Age Discrimination Verdict}
The largest disability discrimination verdict came against Walmart in 2021. A Wisconsin jury awarded $125 million in punitive damages and $150,000 in compensatory damages to Marlo Spaeth, an employee with Down syndrome who was fired after Walmart changed her long-standing work schedule and refused to accommodate her disability. The EEOC brought the case. Because the ADA incorporates the same damage caps as Title VII, the punitive award was widely expected to be reduced to $300,000.{16U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Jury Awards Over $125 Million in EEOC Disability Discrimination Case Against Walmart}{17Forbes. Massive $125 Million Verdict Against Wal-Mart in Disability Discrimination Case}
In September 2023, a jury awarded $36 million in punitive damages and $75,000 in compensatory damages in EEOC v. Drivers Management, LLC and Werner Enterprises, finding that the trucking companies violated the ADA by refusing to hire Victor Robinson, a qualified deaf driver who held a federal exemption from hearing regulations.{18U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Jury Awards Over $36 Million in EEOC Disability Discrimination Case Against Werner Trucking}
The Biggest Jury Verdicts
Jury verdicts have reached much higher dollar figures than any negotiated settlement, but the gap between what the jury writes down and what the plaintiff actually collects is often enormous.
The single largest employment discrimination verdict on record came in June 2022, when a Los Angeles County jury awarded $464.5 million to two former Southern California Edison employees, Alfredo Martinez and Justin Page. Martinez, a longtime supervisor, and Page, a technical planner, alleged pervasive sexual and racial harassment and retaliation after they reported it. Martinez claimed the company orchestrated baseless complaints against him and forced him out after he blew the whistle on what he described as a culture of widespread harassment. The jury awarded $24.6 million in compensatory damages and $440 million in punitive damages, with $400 million of the punitive award going to Martinez alone. The jury found SCE acted with “malice, fraud, or oppression” and held parent company Edison International liable as an integrated enterprise. Edison announced plans to challenge the verdict and seek a new trial.{19Los Angeles Times. Former Southern California Edison Employees Verdict Sexual Harassment Retaliation}{20CAPCLaw.com. Inside a $464M Verdict Against Corporate Retaliation and Sex Discrimination}
In October 2022, a jury in the Southern District of Texas awarded $366 million to Jennifer Harris, a Black former saleswoman at FedEx Corporate Services who alleged retaliation after she filed internal race discrimination complaints. The award included $365 million in punitive damages.{21ePerils. Large Loss List EPL Table} The Fifth Circuit gutted the verdict in February 2024. The court ruled that Harris’s claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1981 were barred by a six-month limitation provision in her employment contract. It upheld the jury’s finding on her Title VII retaliation claim but applied the federal statutory cap of $300,000 for combined compensatory and punitive damages under Title VII, then further reduced compensatory damages to $100,000 and eliminated the punitive award entirely.{22United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Harris v. FedEx Corporate Services, Inc.}
A September 2024 verdict met an even harsher fate. A jury in the Eastern District of Washington awarded $237.6 million in Gratton v. UPS, including $198 million in punitive damages and $39.6 million in compensatory damages. By February 2025, the court had vacated the entire verdict, striking the punitive award because “no reasonable jury could have found UPS acted with malice or reckless indifference” and ordering a new trial on compensatory damages because of plaintiff’s counsel misconduct.{23Gibson Dunn. Gibson Dunn Wins Motion for New Trial Wiping Out $237.6 Million Verdict Against UPS}
Why Headline Verdicts Shrink
Federal law caps the combined compensatory and punitive damages a plaintiff can recover under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, with the ceiling scaled to employer size. For companies with more than 500 employees, the cap is $300,000. Back pay, front pay, and attorney’s fees sit outside those caps, but the ceiling on emotional-distress and punitive damages means even a nine-figure Title VII verdict against a Fortune 500 employer can shrink to a sliver of its original size.{24U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Remedies for Employment Discrimination}
Plaintiffs often file parallel claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1981, which prohibits racial discrimination in contracts and has no cap on damages, or under state statutes like the California Fair Employment and Housing Act and the New York State Human Rights Law, which also carry no statutory ceiling on compensatory or punitive awards. Because an uncapped verdict remains possible under those laws, they generate much higher settlement leverage than Title VII claims standing alone.{25Nisar Law Group. Race Discrimination Remedies}
That dynamic explains why the negotiated class-action settlements against Goldman Sachs, Coca-Cola, Texaco, Novartis, and Sterling Jewelers often represent more money actually paid to workers than the splashier verdicts covered in the press. The parties bargained with full knowledge of the caps and the appellate risks, and the resulting number is what the plaintiffs took home.
Ranked List of Largest Discrimination Settlements and Verdicts
Where verdicts were reduced or overturned, both the initial and final amounts are noted.
- $464.5 million verdict: Southern California Edison, sexual and racial harassment and retaliation (2022). Post-trial status unconfirmed.
- $366 million verdict, reduced on appeal: FedEx, retaliation against Jennifer Harris (2022). The Fifth Circuit applied the $300,000 Title VII cap and eliminated punitive damages (2024).
- $237.6 million verdict, vacated: UPS, retaliation in Gratton v. UPS (2024). Entire verdict wiped out and new trial ordered (2025).
- $215 million settlement: Goldman Sachs, gender discrimination in Chen-Oster v. Goldman Sachs (2023).
- $192 million settlement: Coca-Cola, racial discrimination in Abdallah v. Coca-Cola (2001).
- $176 million settlement: Texaco, racial discrimination in Roberts v. Texaco (1996).
- $175 million settlement: Novartis, gender discrimination in Velez v. Novartis (2010), following a $253 million jury verdict.
- $175 million settlement: Sterling Jewelers, gender pay and promotion discrimination (2022).
- $137 million verdict, retried, then settled: Tesla, racial discrimination in Diaz v. Tesla (2021). Judge reduced to $15 million; retried for $3.2 million; confidential settlement (2024).
- $125 million verdict: Walmart, disability discrimination in EEOC v. Walmart Stores East (2021). Punitive damages expected to be reduced to the $300,000 Title VII cap.
- $118 million settlement: Google, gender pay discrimination in Ellis v. Google (2022).
- $103 million verdict: Liberty Mutual, age discrimination in Slagel v. Liberty Mutual (2025).
- $100 million settlement: Riot Games, gender discrimination and sexual harassment (2022).
- $36 million verdict: Werner Enterprises, disability discrimination in EEOC v. Drivers Management (2023).