The company logo for AT&T is displayed on a screen on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., September 18, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

(Reuters) – Every company committed to diversifying its workforce should pay attention to Joseph DiBenedetto’s age, gender and race discrimination lawsuit against AT&T Services Inc, his former employer.

U.S. District Judge Mark Cohen of Atlanta on Thursday ruled that DiBenedetto’s case can move forward, adopting a May 19 report and recommendation by U.S. Magistrate Judge Regina Cannon as the opinion of the court. The magistrate refused to dismiss any of the discrimination claims in DiBenedetto’s complaint, despite AT&T’s arguments that the claims were either mutually exclusive or insufficiently specific and detailed.

Cannon concluded, in essence, that AT&T’s company-wide initiative to hire, support and promote employees who are not white men gave rise to plausible allegations of discrimination by a 58-year-old white man. The judge said AT&T’s intentions were “laudable in theory.” Diversity and inclusion, she said, are the whole point of federal civil rights law. But AT&T’s allegedly “rigid reliance on the company’s internal demographics,” Cannon wrote, plausibly implied — at this early stage of DiBenedetto’s case — that his bosses “unlawfully considered his race and gender when terminating him under the pretext of financial strain.”

You can call it the paradox of the old white guy: Employees who have historically been entrenched in the majority are also entitled to protection under laws that were intended to assure equal treatment for women and racial minorities.

I’m using the “old white guy” phrase because it appears in DiBenedetto’s complaint. According to his lawyers at Legare, Attwood & Wolfe, DiBenedetto was a highly valued assistant vice president in AT&T’s property tax group, which was, in turn, part of the company’s finance department. DiBenedetto’s boss, Gary Johnson, who oversaw nine vice presidents, allegedly commented frequently on employees’ “runway” — an oblique reference, according to the complaint, to the remaining years of their careers.

The complaint recounts an incident, for instance, about Johnson telling DiBenedetto in 2020 that he expected to retire in a couple of years. DiBenedetto said he was interested in applying for his boss’ job. Johnson allegedly noted DiBenedetto’s short “runway.” According to DiBenedetto, the boss said, “In these roles, you know, you’ve g