Having been in charge of hiring a few times I can absolutely tell you that coding problems are not motivated by a desire to "skirt around discrimination". There is no need to skirt around it, we could just do it, via whatever method of interview you want to propose.

However I have seen the "leetcode" process defeat discrimination at least once in my career, when HR was assuming a black guy was not qualified but he was able to prove himself on the white board.

There are plenty of good critiques about the whiteboard process, many of which I agree with, but this critique is silly.