Antitrust scholar Mark Lemley of Stanford Law School said that based on his understanding of the certification process, participation in the Diversity Lab program “seems extremely unlikely to be an antitrust violation.”

The FTC would have to show that the targeted law firms actually restricted the hiring of white employees, and that doing so was not an independent decision based on the firm’s business interests.

“Unless there are facts suggesting both of those things that haven’t been made public, this is the sort of claim based on parallel conduct that regularly gets thrown out by courts on a motion to dismiss,” Lemley said.