White Hospital Executive wins $10 million in Reverse Discrimination Case

David Duvall, a former marketing executive with Novant Health, in North Carolina, was awarded $10 million in punitive damages when a federal jury in Charlotte, NC, found he was fired because he was a white male.

Duvall claimed in a 2019 reverse discrimination lawsuit that he was let go from his job in July 2018 because of the health system’s diversity efforts, and that he ended up being replaced by one Black woman and one White woman. Duvall accused Novant of violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits race and gender discrimination in the workplace. The jury sided with Duvall, and said Novant Health failed to prove that it would have terminated him regardless of his race.