It should be noted that even if there is a non-discriminatory explanation, it is still illegal under the disparate impact legal theory:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact

Not exactly, as per your link:

> ...an unjustified adverse impact on members of a protected class...

Requiring doctors to have an MD is going to have a disparate impact on all sorts of factors, including protected classes. Likewise, an anonymized leetcode question isn't going to pass candidates uniformly across identities. But there's a pretty strong case that the use of such measures is justified.

Prioritizing candidates with a referral might be argued to be a disparate impact without justification, and that's somewhere there might be a stronger case but it's not so clear cut.

Notably, "justification" is an affirmative defense (they don't have to prove you were unjustified - you have to prove you were justified. Guilty until proven innocent, in other words), and in practice must meet a very high bar - e.g. Griggs v. Duke Power Co., that started all this, ruled that an IQ test for management positions is not justified. More recently, a test for teachers where Whites had a higher pass rate than Blacks or Latinos (no word on Asians) was also ruled unjustified:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/black-latino-teachers-collectin...

A controversial ruling, especially given how prevalent exams are for employment: MD, JD for lawyers, heck even a bachelor's degree is a disparate impact. Notably, one of the lawyers who helped overturn Brown vs Board of Education (now a judge) ruled in favor of New York in a lower court: https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-education/the-teach...

Do you have evidence that in-group preferences are happening? Your workplace becoming more diverse is not proof of in-group preferences.

The situation laid out in the comment above is that of a workplace becoming less and less diverse, not more.

The situation did not make it clear one way or another. Probably on purpose.

> ...along the lines of: <person_with_specific attribute> becoming a manager, then every one on the team slowly being replaced with <person_with_specific attribute>...

The commenter made it clear the team is becoming not just less diverse, but completely homogenous: "every one on the team" sharing the same identity characteristic as the lead.