While quotas remain controversial in the United States, they do seem to be effective at furthering diversity. The portion of California-based companies with all-male boards, for instance, fell from more than 30% to less than 2% after the state passed a law in 2018 mandating women on boards.
But quotas can be tricky from a legal perspective. They “usually get shut down at the level of courts,” says Stephanie Creary, an assistant professor at the Wharton School of Business whose research focuses on diversity and inclusion.
And indeed that’s what happened earlier this month to another California law, passed in 2020, which requires publicly traded companies based in the state to have at least one board member who is Black, Latino, Asian, LGBTQ, or from another “underrepresented community.” It was struck down earlier this month.
Legal precedent holds that quotas violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination against people based on race, gender, religion, age, and other protected identities, because they could lead companies or schools to discriminate against people outside the targeted groups. That was the argument successfully made by Judicial Watch, the conservative group that convinced a judge in Los Angeles County to overturn the 2020 law. (It has a similar challenge pending against the state’s 2018 gender diversity mandate.).
California isn’t the country’s only battleground. Last year, a group headed by Edward Blum,...
US President Donald Trump made a series of “false” and “uncorroborated” claims about the Iran conflict and his foreign policy record during a recent press conference, according to a fact check by ...