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California Law Mandating Female Quotas on Corporate Boards Judged Unconstitutional, In Victory For Judicial Watch

California Law Mandating Female Quotas on Corporate Boards Judged Unconstitutional, In Victory For Judicial Watch

“S.B. 826’s goal was to achieve general equity or parity; its goal was not to boost California’s economy, not to improve opportunities for women in the workplace nor not to protect California taxpayers, public employees, pensions and retirees.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPS1P2YGJl0

The bad times for super-feminists continues.

A Los Angeles judge has just ruled that the California law requiring women on corporate boards is unconstitutional.

Superior Court Judge Maureen Duffy-Lewis said the law that would have required boards have up to three female directors by this year violated the right to equal treatment. The ruling was dated Friday.

The conservative legal group Judicial Watch had challenged the law, claiming it was illegal to use taxpayer funds to enforce a law that violates the equal protection clause of the California Constitution by mandating a gender-based quota.

The 2018 law required publicly traded corporations based in California with five members on their boards to have at least one female member by the end of 2019. In response to the passage of the measure, Judicial Watch filed the gender quota lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court, on behalf of California taxpayers, Robin Crest, Earl De Vries and Judy De Vries.

The judge eviscerated the law, and Judicial Watch scored a major victory as it stated in a press release.

In the Court’s 23-page verdict, the Court specifically found that “S.B. 826’s goal was to achieve general equity or parity; its goal was not to boost California’s economy, not to improve opportunities for women in the workplace nor not to protect California taxpayers, public employees, pensions and retirees.”

Further, the Court found that “putting more women on boards demonstrated that the Legislature’s actual purpose was gender-balancing, not remedying discrimination.” “There is no Compelling Governmental interest in remedying discrimination in the board selection process because neither the Legislature nor Defendant could identify any specific, purposeful, intentional and unlawful discrimination to be remedied,” Judge Duffy-Lewis said.

“The Court eviscerated California’s unconstitutional gender quota mandate. This is the second California court decision finding that quotas for corporate boards are unconstitutional. The radical Left’s unprecedented attacks on anti-discrimination law has suffered another stinging defeat,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

“Thankfully, California courts have upheld the core American value of equal protection under the law. Judicial Watch’s taxpayer clients are heroes for standing up for civil rights against the Left’s pernicious efforts to undo anti-discrimination protections. Judicial Watch’s legal team has helped protect the civil rights of every American with these successful lawsuits.”

This measure was doomed to be a spectacular failure from the start. Even then-Governor Jerry Brown thought the measure was dubious, and only signed it because of the #MeToo frenzy.

A study found that female representation on corporate boards in California, just 15.8% in 2018, had more than doubled by the end of last year. But then-Gov. Jerry Brown, who signed the bill into law, issued an accompanying statement saying “serious legal objections” had been raised that “may prove fatal” to the measure, and his warning was borne out in is first test in court.

“The Legislature’s actual purpose was gender-balancing, not remedying discrimination,” Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Maureen Duffy-Lewis said Friday. She said the state, in defending the law, had failed to offer evidence that corporations had discriminated against women in selecting board members. Instead, she said, the usual causes were a lack of open board seats and the inclination of boards to choose someone they already knew, such as a corporation’s chief executive.

In fact, the then-Attorney General realized the law was utterly unenforceable.

Although the law carried potential hefty penalties for failing to file an annual report or comply with the law, a chief in the secretary of state’s office acknowledged during the trial that it was toothless.

No fines have ever been levied and there was no intention to do so, Betsy Bogart testified. Further, a letter that surfaced during trial from former Secretary of State Alex Padilla warned Brown weeks before he signed the law that it was probably unenforceable.

“Any attempt by the secretary of state to collect or enforce the fine would likely exceed its authority,” Padilla wrote.

How many hours of legislative energy was put into this law by both the state Assembly and the Senate? How many essential priorities for California were ignored for a chance for state politicians to posture in the #Metoo area?

Fortunately, a serious-minded judge has mercifully killed a sexist and senseless measure. That is a rare feat in California. Judicial Watch and California businesses have scored a major win with this decision.

The full judicial verdict can be found HERE.

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Comments

JohnSmith100 | May 17, 2022 at 7:09 pm

First is was promoting AA incompetents, a Peter Principle enhancement program on steriods, Then it was womwn should be taken at their word, next it will be civil rights for pets and their haveing a full say in our finances.

Affirmative Action is unconstitutional. I know the courts will bend over backward to avoid making that kind of ruling but it’s obvious. This ruling is basically against Affirmative Action just not along racial lines.

Cali’s similarly brazen and blatantly unconstitutional law mandating that at least one Board member hail “…from an underrepresented community, defined as an individual who self‑identifies as Black, African American, Hispanic, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Native Hawaiian, or Alaska Native, or who self‑identifies as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender” was also struck down, last month.

It’s just insane that the Dumb-o-crats are proffering these blatantly discriminatory statutes, in the first place.

    henrybowman in reply to guyjones. | May 17, 2022 at 8:00 pm

    “It’s just insane that the Dumb-o-crats are proffering these blatantly discriminatory statutes, in the first place.”

    Not historically.
    Democrats have always been the party of discrimination, segregation, and outright slavery.

Please remind me … how exactly does one know whether a person is “female”?

    OldProf2 in reply to Q. | May 17, 2022 at 9:58 pm

    Great question. That’s a way they could have gotten around this law even if the court didn’t throw it out. Just have some of the existing Board members “identify” as women. In CA, that’s just as good as being a real woman.

    Peabody in reply to Q. | May 17, 2022 at 10:11 pm

    There is no agreed up way to determine sex while a person is still alive. But after a person is deceased you can call Dr Temperance Brennan to come and examine the skeletal remains. She is able to identify the sex of “Bones” with 100% accuracy.

Another Voice | May 18, 2022 at 12:03 am

California legislatures are a mirror image of the what we see happening in Washington D.C. by both the house and senate Democrats. What a bunch of hypocritical Axxholes. The only thing they do is throw money down the well with no markers to measure outcomes . When they’re not spending tax dollars on progressive projects they spend the time endlessly debating the policies to adopt programs that would spend even more tax dollars.

Plan A was to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.(but Phillis Schlafly successfully blocked that)
Plan B was to enact specific laws, such as Title IX of the Higher Education Amendments of 1972 to achieve the same thing. (But that effort ran out of steam and ran into the Equal Protection Clause.)
Plan C was to find enough states to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, even though it had died years eariler. (“The four state strategy.”) But the Trump-appointed Archivist of the US refused to add it to the Constitution.
Plan D is to seek judicial review of ERA rejection in the courts.
Plan E is throw mud at the wall and see what sticks, if anything.

    JohnSmith100 in reply to lawgrad. | May 18, 2022 at 3:08 pm

    I worked with Phillis Schlafly for about 20 years on another issue, she was a really sharp person.

Normalizing a favorable juxtaposition of the sexes? Or Diversity, Inequity, and Exclusion (DIE) ideology?

    n.n in reply to n.n. | May 18, 2022 at 5:02 pm

    DIE ideology under the nominally “secular” Pro-Choice “ethical” religion that denies individual dignity, individual conscience, intrinsic value, and normalizes color blocs (e.g. “people of color”), color quotas, and affirmative discrimination.