Employment

The ACR Project and the Center for Equal Opportunity together filed an amicus brief on behalf of Cory R. Liu with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, supporting a challenge to the SEC’s 2021 approval of NASDAQ’s alteration of its listing requirements.  Those requirements force listed companies to: (a) disclose how many directors they have; and (b) (i) produce stats showing a sufficiently “diverse” set of directors across various identitarian classifications to satisfy NASDAQ; or (ii) explain in writing why they don’t.*, ** Our full brief is below. Building on Mr. Liu’s work in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard/UNC, where …

This article originally appeared on RealClearPolicy.com on February 6, 2024 “It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.” Those were Chief Justice John Roberts’ thoughts in a 2006 voting rights case alleging Texas legislators had redrawn voting districts illegally diluting the votes of racial minorities. That sentiment applies with even greater force when lawyers and judges are the ones doing the divvying up. On January 31, the nonprofits American Civil Rights Project and Center for Equal Opportunity sent a letter to the American Bar Association Business Law Section (ABA BLS) demanding it stop selecting law students for its Diversity Clerkship Program based …

The Washington Post ran an article recently on Google and its demographics. Most of it is devoted to discussing the company’s “diversity” efforts and its painfully slow progress in achieving the politically correct racial, ethnic, and gender balance it wants. Too many white and Asian men, not enough of everyone else. But fear not: The suits — does Google have “suits”? — acknowledge “we need to do more to achieve our desired diversity and inclusion outcomes,” so department heads will be “tasked with meeting intermediate milestones,” and the company has set as one of its “major goals” to “reach or …

The job description explicitly says only women and applicants of color will be considered. Baseball is my sport, and kudos to the Houston Astros for winning the World Series—its first ever. But discrimination on the basis of race and sex remains wrong and illegal, and as I wrote in this piece, first published in The Weekly Standard, Major League Baseball needs to ask whether it really wants to deny jobs in its business operations to people who lack the “right” skin color or sex. Of all the professional sports, Major League baseball has the broadest range of players from diverse …

New York City mayor Bill de Blasio wants to coerce museums and arts groups that receive city money into using hiring quotas based on race and ethnicity, according to the New York Times. But it would be illegal for employers to give in to this pressure, because Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act forbids such discrimination. Federal statute aside, it is unconstitutional for the city to engage in such pressuring. Any use of racial and ethnic classifications is “presumptively invalid” and triggers “strict scrutiny,” which can be met only if, for starters, there is a “compelling” government interest. …

Uber hired former attorney general Eric Holder to give it some advice about its scandal-ridden workplace. Predictably, much of that advice turned out to be more politically correct than legally sound, much like the Justice Department when he was running it. Alas, the Uber board has already announced that it will adopt Mr. Holder’s recommendations. In particular, Mr. Holder wants Uber to get its numbers right, by hiring more “underrepresented” minorities and women. And so: “The Head of Diversity (or Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer) should set goals with respect to annual improvements in diversity and regularly publish data on …

There are, alas, no minorities or women in the Cranston fire department — the only Rhode Island city so stained.  But the city is aware of the ignominy and is aggressively trying to find suitable applicants — and indeed it admits to “loosening” its hiring requirements in order to solve this problem. But just a second:  Is it really a good idea to be lowering standards for those in charge of saving other people’s lives?  Councilman Michael J. Farina apparently thinks not.  “Maybe minorities don’t want to be firefighters,” he says. “I can’t see lowering our standards” to hire them, …

According to the Wall Street Journal, “Starbucks Corp. is teaming up with more than a dozen companies in a commitment to increase hiring of young, minority workers over the next three years.”  It’s unclear from the article exactly how race and ethnicity are to be used in the hiring process.  The definition of “minority” is also not spelled out, though as is often the case some minorities seem to be more equal than others (blacks and Latinos are mentioned, but no one else).   Nor is it clear what the justification is for this nonsense. Starbucks Chief Executive Howard Schultz …