The lawsuit would flop if there’s more men than women in the group being hired for, since it’s absolutely permissible to correct diversity imbalances.

(I am not your lawyer, this is not legal advice.)

I’m pretty sure that the law doesn’t allow discrimination to correct diversity imbalances.

DEI initiatives are about driving recruiting efforts and targeting towards underrepresented groups (e.g. having recruiters reaching out to qualified women, running recruiting drives at colleges with high minority populations, etc.) but the ultimate hiring decision cannot exclude anyone on the basis of a protected class.

Selectivity is not necessarily discriminatory. For further reading, I recommend:

- United Steelworkers of America v. Weber, 443 US 193 (1979)

- Johnson v. VTA; 480 U.S. 616 (1987)

Thanks, these are interesting cases. However, I suspect that these both hinge of the fact that they are related to specific training and internal promotion, which (to me at least) seems like it’s easier to judge that those not selected do not have their interests “unnecessarily trammeled” (they are still employed and will have other opportunities to make progress in the organization). Curious if you know of any pertaining to the external hiring decision itself? I am not debating anything, but the nuances are interesting to me.

The references above are all that I have prepared for today, apologies.

I am not a lawyer but I am curious as to this. Maybe it depends on your jurisdiction? What is the legal precedent for this?

Just wondering when diversity is balanced.

I guess the first part would be deciding how to measure diversity. Maybe put people into different buckets based on their skin color, sex, gender and disability status.

Then, the next part would be deciding if we want an even split or counts representative of the field (unless that's incorrect too) or maybe based on demographics.

The current precedent is that it’s fine to set short-term curative diversity targets and selectively hire towards them.

> (I am not your lawyer, this is not legal advice.)

Good thing you're not a lawyer and this not legal advice because what you're suggesting is in a legal gray area at best.

Take care not to mistake “not your lawyer” as “not a lawyer”.

Whoops, my bad. That makes your previous comment look even worse though, not better.

But the people discriminated against don't know it.

I wonder if you can get whistle blower protection if you know your team is discriminating against a protected group, and who you can even report that to.