Comment by abcd_f

5 days ago

Source for _legally_ ?

(Legally as in, using the legal system)

DOJ sued Deloitte over DEI programs, they ended up settling for $21.5 million: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/deloitte-pay-215-mi...

Texas Attorney General declared DEI initiatives unconstitutional in a legal opinion: https://www.gibsondunn.com/texas-attorney-general-declares-p...

Several state Attorneys General sent legal threats to 20 major law firms over DEI: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/republican-led-states-deman...

Texas Attorney General warned major banks that DEI programs violate feduciary duty: https://today.westlaw.com/Document/Ibce2fdc5dcec11efb708bbad...

  • There's a big difference between suing people for prima facie illegal hiring practices and suing people for holding Grace Hopper celebrations. We probably shouldn't conflate them. Your links, as best as I can tell, are about the former sort of activity - hiring or paying people differently on the basis of protected characteristics.

  • You understand that none of these companies believe the merits of why they are settling?

    They are settling because, like the law firms Trump suborned, they didn't want the MAGA rage; especially in the case of Texas, where Trump may (correctly as it goes) think Paxton is a disgusting slug of a man, but still vocally supports him.

    The legal system was just the venue. All of this is bullshit corporate spinelessness in the face of threats without merit, especially in firms like Deloitte, who do not want their M&A interfered with.

Every statement from company officials such as "we only employ women" or "toxic males", can be used as evidence at court. It is very difficult to prove bias from vague sanitized corporate language, direct "activist" statements make proving such bias very easy. For example recent lawsuit with IBM!

  • > "we only employ women"

    But I highly doubt most companies were saying that or implying it. There's more to DEI than having minority quotas. Would DEI practices such as campaigns to encourage more men to go into nursing, midwifery or teaching be targeted too?

    • > such as campaigns to encourage more men to go into nursing, midwifery or teaching be targeted too?

      These aren't illegal and have never been the problem.

      Discriminational hiring practices and quotas are, unfortunately DEI activists decided to do these.

      4 replies →

    • Few companies said that they only employ women. That would be too overt.

      But plenty of companies very publicly instituted policies to financially penalize their employees if they fail to meet gender quotas. Remember, a policy of giving a bonus when an "inclusion milestone" of X% women in technical roles is reached is fundamentally the same thing as instituting a penalty when that X% quota is missed.

    • Yeah there's a decent chance that DEI practices to do this violate neutrally-written US civil rights law, and also make women doing nursing or midwifery angry enough to use lawsuits in order to end these programs.

There's a case going through the courts for Red Hat right now where they based managerial bonuses on how diverse their teams were, which reportedly led to them pushing out white males.

Such should rightfully be illegal.