It now appears—at least until the appellate dust settles—that California’s statutory efforts to mandate board seats for females and individuals from underrepresented communities is on hold.
The recent defeats that two trial courts handed California suggests now may be an opportune time to rethink (and possibly reframe) statutory board diversity efforts to focus on disclosure, not mandates. The first ruling, on April 1, involved California’s law mandating corporate board seats for underrepresented communities, while the second ruling, on May 13, dealt with the state’s landmark requirement that corporate boards include women.
Both California courts rejected the evidence supporting the state’s board diversity mandates. While the procedural avenues to these rulings differed slightly, their legal premises rested on the same failure of the state to prove these laws were narrowly tailored to address specific harms that the state had a compelling interest to address.
In sum, both courts concluded that California failed to meet its evidentiary burden to justify state-imposed penalties for missing statutorily mandated gender and race milestones for public company boards.
While the...
She is 66 and on Original Medicare. Her latest Medicare Summary Notice (MSN) lists a $1,200 knee brace from a supplier she has never heard of. Her knees are fine and no package ever came. Medicare...