Tech Mahindra’s Race-Discrimination Case Keeps Hitting the Same Wall

The Alleged Pattern Behind the Lawsuit

Williams’s lawsuit is about more than one firing. His complaint alleges that Tech Mahindra (Americas) Inc. operated a broader employment system that favored South Asian workers in hiring, staffing, promotion and termination decisions.

According to the allegations described in the federal court record, Tech Mahindra had approximately 5,100 U.S. employees across roughly 25 offices. Williams alleged that about 90% of the U.S. workforce was South Asian and that South Asians made up a substantially smaller share of the relevant labor market.

The complaint also alleged that the company’s managerial and supervisory ranks were overwhelmingly South Asian. Williams connected that alleged imbalance to employment decisions affecting non-South Asian workers.

Those numbers are important to understanding why Williams framed the case as a potential pattern-or-practice case rather than simply arguing that one supervisor made one discriminatory decision. They are allegations from the complaint, however, not judicial findings that the workforce composition itself proves discrimination.

Then There Was the H-1B Question

A major part of Williams’s allegations concerns Tech Mahindra’s use of H-1B visas, which allow U.S. employers to employ foreign workers in qualifying specialty occupations.

Williams alleged that Tech Mahindra sought large numbers of H-1B approvals and used the visa process as part of a broader system favoring South Asian workers. The complaint cited 4,931 approved H-1B petitions in 2017, 3,344 in 2016 and 2,553 in 2015.

Williams argued that those numbers were significant because Tech Mahindra’s U.S. workforce was much smaller than the number of visa petitions approved across those years. His theory was that the company’s recruiting and employment practices could not be understood separately from its international hiring pipeline.

Again, this is where precision matters. The existence of H-1B approvals does not itself establish unlawful discrimination. Williams alleged that the visa activity was part of a discriminatory employment system. The courts have not made that finding.

What Happened to Williams

Williams joined Tech Mahindra in June 2014 as a Regional Manager and Senior Director of Business Development working out of Columbus, Ohio. He was placed on a sales team of eight people and alleged that only two members of the group, including him, were not South Asian.

He also alleged that the vast majority of Tech Mahindra’s managerial and supervisory personnel were South Asian and that Hindi was frequently spoken at regional meetings attended overwhelmingly by South Asian employees, which he said excluded him socially.

Williams alleged that he performed well despite difficulties generating sales and that he reported problems obtaining client meetings and competing for business. In February 2015, he received a small raise but alleged that he was not promoted because of the company’s alleged pattern of discrimination.

Then the situation changed.

In June 2015, Williams was told that he was not meeting his sales goals and was placed on a 60-day performance improvement plan. He alleges that the revenue goals were unreasonable and that the plan was designed to create a pretext for terminating him.

Tech Mahindra terminated his employment on August 19, 2015.

Whether race was actually the reason for that termination has never been decided by a court.

The First Lawsuit Wasn’t Williams’s

The unusual procedural history is central to understanding why the case has survived multiple rounds of dismissal.

The Four-Year Clock Became the Real Fight

Williams’s employment ended in August 2015. The parties agreed that the longest potentially applicable statute of limitations for the relevant Section 1981 claim was four years.

That meant the ordinary deadline expired in August 2019.

Williams did not file his New Jersey lawsuit until April 2020.

His answer was not that the deadline had somehow never existed. It was that the law should treat his earlier attempt to join the Grant lawsuit as interrupting or suspending the limitations period.

That distinction produced one of the central legal questions in the case: can someone who tried to assert the same claim in an existing lawsuit, but was prevented from joining it, later receive equitable tolling when filing in the correct forum?

The Appeals Court Said the Door Was Open

In 2023, the Third Circuit said the District Court had made a mistake by dismissing the class allegations as untimely without considering wrong-forum tolling.

The court explained that traditional equitable tolling can apply when a plaintiff timely asserted rights in the wrong forum. It distinguished that doctrine from American Pipe tolling, which the Supreme Court has said cannot generally be used to launch a new, untimely class action after the limitations period has expired.

The case returned to the District Court, which rejected Williams’s tolling theory in February 2024. The judge reasoned that the proposed amended complaint adding Williams had never actually been accepted for filing in North Dakota.

Williams appealed again.

The Third Circuit Reversed Again

On December 10, 2024, the Third Circuit again vacated the dismissal.

This time, the court directly addressed whether Williams’s unsuccessful attempt to join the earlier lawsuit could qualify as a filing for purposes of wrong-forum tolling.

The court emphasized three circumstances: Williams sought to assert his claim within the applicable limitations period by attempting to join an existing putative class action; the first-filed rule prevented him from simply filing a duplicative federal lawsuit elsewhere; and the North Dakota court denied his request to join because the existing plaintiff was being compelled into individual arbitration.

But the Third Circuit did not say that Williams automatically qualified for equitable tolling.

Instead, it sent the question back to the District Court to decide whether equitable principles actually justified tolling the limitations period.

Tech Mahindra Took the Fight to the Supreme Court

Tech Mahindra asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the 2024 Third Circuit decision.

The company argued that the case raised a conflict among federal appellate courts over whether an unsuccessful motion to amend can have tolling consequences and whether wrong-forum tolling can preserve class claims after the ordinary limitations period expires.

The Supreme Court denied the petition on June 23, 2025.

That did not mean the Supreme Court found that Tech Mahindra discriminated. It meant only that the Court declined to take up Tech Mahindra’s challenge to the Third Circuit’s ruling.

Then the Case Came Back Down Again

The next development was much less favorable to Williams.

On September 25, 2025, District Judge Michael Shipp considered Tech Mahindra’s second renewed motion to dismiss.

The court accepted, for purposes of the motion, the factual allegations in Williams’s complaint. But the problem was the complaint’s treatment of equitable tolling.

The court concluded that the complaint plainly showed that Williams filed after the four-year limitations period had expired. It then found that the complaint did not plead facts about the Grant litigation or equitable tolling sufficient to allow the court to reasonably infer that tolling should apply.

What the September 2025 Ruling Actually Decided

The Part That Still Hasn’t Been Tested

This is the strange feature of the case: the most provocative allegations have largely remained outside the scope of what the courts have actually decided.

Williams alleges a corporate employment system in which South Asian workers were disproportionately represented and non-South Asian workers were disadvantaged in hiring, staffing, promotions and terminations. He also alleges that Tech Mahindra’s use of H-1B visas was connected to that system.

Those allegations have not been transformed into judicial findings.

The litigation has repeatedly turned on whether Williams filed in time, whether his earlier attempt to join another lawsuit can toll the deadline, and whether his complaint contains enough factual allegations to invoke that exception.

In other words, the case has spent years fighting over whether the courthouse door is open before the parties ever reached the question of what actually happened inside the company.

Why the Latest Dismissal Is Different From the Earlier Ones

The September 2025 ruling should not be read as simply repeating the February 2024 decision.

In 2024, the District Court said wrong-forum tolling was unavailable because Williams’s proposed amended complaint had never been accepted by the North Dakota court.

The Third Circuit rejected that reasoning.

By September 2025, the District Court was operating under the Third Circuit’s determination that wrong-forum tolling was legally available. The question had shifted from “Can this doctrine apply?” to “Did Williams plead enough facts to actually invoke it?”

The answer to the second question was no, at least on the complaint then before the court.

What the Case Does (and Does Not Say) About Tech Mahindra

It’s tempting to read repeated appeals and dismissals as a verdict on the underlying allegations. But!! That would go beyond the record. And we here at evilcorporations.com do not go beyond the record because only talk about established facts.

The 2023 Third Circuit ruling said Williams could use a pattern-or-practice theory as an indirect method of proving employment discrimination at later stages of litigation. That was a pleading issue, not a finding that the alleged pattern existed.

The later litigation has primarily concerned the limitations period and equitable tolling.

Nothing in the September 2025 decision establishes that Tech Mahindra’s workforce composition was discriminatory, that its H-1B practices were unlawful, that Williams was terminated because of his race, or that the company’s promotion and staffing practices violated Section 1981.

Those are precisely the substantive questions the allegations raise, but they remain unresolved by the rulings located in the case record.

What a Legitimate Resolution Would Have to Establish

If the litigation were ever to reach the merits, the central issue would no longer be whether Williams filed the right paperwork at the right time. It would be whether the evidence actually supports his theory of discriminatory employment practices.

That would require more than showing that Tech Mahindra’s workforce was overwhelmingly South Asian. Workforce demographics can be relevant evidence, but they do not by themselves establish intentional discrimination.

The substantive case would need evidence connecting the alleged demographic imbalance and employment decisions to discriminatory treatment of non-South Asian workers.

The existing record described in the appellate opinions does not contain a judicial finding making that connection.

What to Watch

• Any amended complaint: The September 2025 ruling gave Williams an opportunity to add allegations supporting equitable tolling.
• Any subsequent dismissal or appeal: A new pleading could produce another ruling about whether the limitations problem can be overcome.
• The merits: If the procedural barriers are overcome, the litigation could finally turn toward evidence supporting or undermining the alleged discriminatory employment pattern.
• The scope of any class: Even if Williams clears the limitations issue, a proposed class would still have to satisfy the applicable requirements for class treatment.

The Bigger Picture

The Williams litigation is ultimately about two different stories that have become tangled together.

The first is the substantive allegation: that a major technology-services company built an employment system that disproportionately favored South Asian workers and disadvantaged non-South Asians.

The second is the procedural story: Williams tried to join an earlier class action, was blocked from doing so after the lead plaintiff was sent to arbitration, filed his own case after the ordinary limitations period, won two significant rulings from the Third Circuit concerning wrong-forum tolling, watched the Supreme Court decline to intervene, and then saw the District Court dismiss his complaint again because the complaint did not plead enough facts to support equitable tolling.

Those two stories should not be confused.

As of the latest publicly located ruling, the courts have not answered the central factual question: did Tech Mahindra actually discriminate against non-South Asian workers?

What they have answered is narrower. Williams’s route into court was legally complicated, the Third Circuit concluded that wrong-forum tolling was available under the circumstances, the Supreme Court declined to review that ruling, and the District Court later found that Williams’s complaint still had not pleaded enough facts to obtain equitable tolling.

The allegations remain allegations. The evidence behind them remains the unresolved part of the story.

The source document for this investigation is attached below.