As phrased, I don't think the first would be illegal. It probably doesn't actually meet the definition of a quota, although use of the word "quota" is likely to receive stricter scrutiny.
If it can be met without illegal practices, it's perfectly fine, and if you don't actually institute a quota, even if you call it a quota, it's fine.
If the goal can be met by expanding the talent pool or by reducing discrimination, it doesn't matter what you call it.
> Say an orchestra adopts anonymous auditions, and the representation of women rises from 33% to 50%. That's a non-discriminatory hiring policy.
> Another orchestra issues a "goal" or "representation target" or "diversity milestone" or some other euphemism that allocates 50% of the orchestra seats to women. That's a discriminatory hiring policy.
Now what if they are the same orchestra, that is, they set a goal of hiring 50% women, and meet it by blinding auditions? Again, my contention is that it is not necessary to undertake illegal activities to achieve a diverse hiring goal.
You seem to agree with this in theory, but when given any concrete policy proposal, even ones that are widely accepted and have been adopted by wide swaths of the US for the better part of a century, you claim that they are illegal. You're simply incorrect.
> Not regularly, only when companies are successfully sued for discriminating.
This is approximately a weekly occurrence (they settle about 2 cases per week), I'd say that's fairly regular.
Further, such goals were required by all federal contractors from 1965 to Jan 20 of this year (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_11246), its kind of silly to continue to claim that diversity goals are illegal when they've been required by every federal contractor for longer than any of the companies you've mentioned have existed.
"Your performance review score is reduced if you don't meet a quota of X% women" You think this is legal?
> Now what if they are the same orchestra, that is, they set a goal of hiring 50% women, and meet it by blinding auditions?
And what happens if they blind the auditions, but the share of women still falls short of 50%? Well, then they have to adjust the results of the blind auditions to match the quota.
You've repeatedly done this sneaky rhetorical slight of hand, where you endorse explicitly discriminatory policies and justify it with the claim that it could be achieved through non-discriminatory means. But that doesn't change the fact that the policy is discriminatory, and almost certainly would result in discrimination.
If I tell my employers that I don't want to hire any pregnant women - say, we institute a "diversity goal" of 100% non-pregnant employees - they could achieve this goal without actually discriminating against any pregnant women. That doesn't change the fact that such a goal is discriminatory.
> Again, my contention is that it is not necessary to undertake illegal activities to achieve a diverse hiring goal.
I've witnessed firsthand companies setting diversity "goals" of 40% women electrical engineers. 10% of electrical engineers are women. There's no way this can be feasibly achieved without resorting to gender discrimination.
> You seem to agree with this in theory, but when given any concrete policy proposal, even ones that are widely accepted and have been adopted by wide swaths of the US for the better part of a century, you claim that they are illegal. You're simply incorrect.
I've listed numerous hiring policies that I explain are not illegal:
* Anonymous resume review
* Adopting objective evaluation criteria
* Create and send resumes to your recruiters, identical save for identifying information like names, and follow up on any discrepancies on call-backs.
> This is approximately a weekly occurrence (they settle about 2 cases per week), I'd say that's fairly regular.
~100 cases a year nation wide makes it an extremely rare occurrence.
No they don't, they can (and in cases I've seen!) fail to reach the goals! Or they can adopt other legal policies such as additional ones I've suggested.
> Your performance review score is reduced if you don't meet a quota of X% women" You think this is legal?
As long as the methods of increasing representation are legal, yes. You yourself have said as much.
> You've repeatedly done this sneaky rhetorical slight of hand, where you endorse explicitly discriminatory policies and justify it with the claim that it could be achieved through non-discriminatory means.
No, I've been consistent that it is not illegal to have a hiring goal. Such a goal can be met in legal or illegal ways. You appear to consistently claim that even stating a goal and holding people accountable to it is illegal. I disagree. It depends entirely on what methods are chosen. The pursuit of diversity is not inherently illegal.
> I've listed numerous hiring policies that I explain are not illegal
And you've additionally claimed that a number of perfectly legal policies which are unlawfully discriminatory. Pipeline expansion policies with the aim of creating diverse candidate pool are perfectly legal, especially when they aim to account for flaws in existing talent pipelines that may be biased by missing underrepresented candidates.
Your objection to to these programs is that you claim meta announced that the goal of one of their programs was to delay giving interviews and offers to certain candidates with the intent of having those candidates drop out, so they could instead extend more offers to diverse candidates, and that you saw numerical documentation of these delays and their impact. And all I'm going to say so that's the most bullshit thing I've ever heard, because of it were in fact that well documented, it would be a slam dunk case and have been front page news.
The fact that no one else I've ever spoken to about such pipeline expansion and slate diversity programs has ever mentioned such a concern suggests that this "fact" you have is not as well documented or as clearly intentioned as you make it seem.
I'm going to disengage after this post, because we aren't getting anywhere and you appear to be inventing more and more elaborate liee to prop up your objection to these programs. That's your right, but it's not something I want to entertain further.
> ~100 cases a year nation wide makes it an extremely rare occurrence.
But I'll note you ignored the part where I mentioned every federal contractor has done things you claim are unlawful for 60 years.
Not regularly, only when companies are successfully sued for discriminating.
> Can you point to a statutory basis for this claim?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964#Title...
United Steelworkers vs. Weber established that use of protected class as a factor in employment is allowed only in narrow circumstances. In that instance, a company only hired steelworkers from a whites-only union, and were compelled by the government to give preferences to nonwhite employees for some period of time afterward.
In normal circumstances, a company cannot give racial preferences.
> My contention is that it does not require illegal activities to meet reasonably set hiring goals.
You still haven't answered the question:
"Your performance review score is reduced if you don't meet a quota of X% women"
"Your performance review score is reduced if you don't meet a goal of X% women"
Why does one require illegal activities to meet, but not the latter? This remains unanswered.
> In your Catholic example, is saying "we have a goal to stop flipping the coin" illegal?
It's not.
> It is otherwise identical to a goal of increasing representation of a certain group by a certain percentage by changing some aspects of the hiring process that unfairly impacts a particular class.
Because it's using protected class as a factor in hiring.
Say an orchestra adopts anonymous auditions, and the representation of women rises from 33% to 50%. That's a non-discriminatory hiring policy.
Another orchestra issues a "goal" or "representation target" or "diversity milestone" or some other euphemism that allocates 50% of the orchestra seats to women. That's a discriminatory hiring policy.
This is fourth time I've explained this, it seems like you're being willfully ignorant here.
> Why is that policy acceptable, but real world policies are, seemingly in every case, supposedly illegal?
They're not illegal in every case. Anonymizing interviews is legal, for example. The problem is that the legal ways of reducing discrimination don't lead to equitable results. Thus pushes towards equity require illegal discrimination, like setting thresholds and penalizing employees when those thresholds aren't met.
> Why haven't you sued them, if this was documented to the degree you describe, it was on its face illegal.
Because I'm not a victim of its policies. I'm Cuban so I'm one of the "diverse" candidates that fulfills the DSA. I have no basis to sue.