State Attorneys General Warn Google, Other Fortune 100 Companies Not to Use Race in Employment Decisions
Companies like Google and Facebook have boasted about the success of their racial preferences and quotas in hiring. The attorneys general cautioned these practices are ‘both immoral and illegal.’
A letter from 13 state attorneys general to Fortune 100 companies warns them not to use “racial quotas and race-based preferences in employment and contracting.” The letter comes in the wake of—and invokes—the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which held Harvard University’s affirmative action policy violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Tennessee and Kansas attorneys general are co-leading the effort challenging race-based employment practices, according to a press release, with support from the attorneys general of Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Carolina, and West Virginia.
The letter informed the companies that “the Supreme Court’s recent decision should place every employer and contractor on notice” of the illegality of these practices, even by private companies:
[T]he Supreme Court struck down Harvard’s and the University of North Carolina’s race-based admissions policies and reaffirmed “the absolute equality of all citizens of the United States politically and civilly before their own laws.” Notably, the Court also recognized that federal civil-rights statutes prohibiting private entities from engaging in race discrimination apply at least as broadly as the prohibition against race discrimination found in the Equal Protection Clause. (citations omitted)
The letter highlights “commonplace” racial discrimination at the companies, singling out well-known companies like “Airbnb, Apple, Cisco, Facebook, Google, Intel, Lyft, Microsoft, Netflix, Paypal, Snapchat, TikTok, [and] Uber” who allegedly use “[r]acial quotas and other explicitly race-based practices in recruitment, hiring, promotion, and/or contracting.”
In support of its claims, the letter cites a 2021 CNBC article discussing tech companies’ anti-racism commitments. In 2020, Google committed itself to “[i]mproving representation of underrepresented groups in leadership by 30% by 2025” and to “[m]ore than doubling the number of Black workers at non-senior levels by 2025.”
In 2021, according to CNBC, a Google spokesperson reported 2020 was the company’s best year “for hiring Black workers,” who “represented 8.77% of U.S. hiring in 2020 compared with 5.5% in 2019.”
In 2020, Facebook pledged to “[d]iversify staff with 30% more people of color including 30% more Black people in leadership roles over five years. The next year, Facebook reported it “achieved a 38.2% increase in Black leaders, getting a head start on a five-year goal to increase leaders who are people of color by 30%.”
“Such race-based employment and contracting violates both state and federal law,” according to the letter. “Racial discrimination is both immoral and illegal” under state and federal law, according to the letter, which warns companies that the state attorneys general, “as the chief law enforcement officers” of their states, “intend to enforce the law vigorously.”
As support, the letter cites Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which “prohibits racial discrimination in employment.” The letter implies the Court’s decision regarding education and affirmative action, which implicates Title VI, applies in the realm of employment and affirmative action, which implicates Title VII.
The claim that the Court’s affirmative action decision applies to employment is not without controversy. NYU Law’s Kenji Yoshino and David Glasgow commented on the scope of the decision:
While the Court held that affirmative action violates . . . Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it did not hold that affirmative action violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964—the main statute governing the employment relationship. To end workplace affirmative action, the Court would need to overrule two of its longstanding precedents—United Steelworkers v. Weber (1979) and Johnson v. Transportation Agency (1987)—which authorized affirmative action under Title VII.
A representative of the Tennessee attorney general’s office responded to Legal Insurrection‘s request for comment. The representative declined to comment on whether the Court’s affirmative action decision is binding in the realm of employment because the question “is requesting legal advice, which we cannot provide.”
A press release from the Kentucky attorney general’s office offered a more moderated interpretation of the Court’s decision and its impact in the realm of employment:
In light of a recent Supreme Court ruling striking down race-based admissions in universities, a coalition of 13 attorneys general sent a letter to the CEOs of the Fortune 100 expressing concern that some of their companies’ hiring practices may be similarly discriminatory and illegal. (emphasis added)
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Comments
Yet another example of how stupid “MUH BIG GOVERNMENT!!!!” is and how we need to abandon the 21st century selective anarchism of the Republican Party and return to actually governing, using lawful power granted by voters and yes using government.
A fortune 500 hundred company is private property not government, and a State AG is government not a private actor.
Hope we continue in the right direction of ditching the Bush era anarchism.
Danny,
‘Big Govt’ isn’t a universal good. The current composition of the federal govt would seem to suggest that the larger and more expansive the federal govt becomes the more bureaucratic layers are placed between its overseers (Congress) and its owners (the public). This results in an entitled and ideological bureaucracy who see themselves as a modern day clerisy immune from any practical restrains on their powers.
That doesn’t mean that govt doesn’t have useful roles to play or powers to bring to bear. For example a shift in our regulatory outlook and treatment of monopolies or near monopoly entities. Lets go back to including consumer choice as legit basis to break up the behemoth companies like FB, it was good enough for AT&T.
Further you seem to ignore the very real regulatory and legal pressures a Byzantine Federal govt can bring to bear against ‘private companies’ to further their own ideological ends or push the policy preferences of the new ‘clerisy’ of bureaucrats v that of duly elected representatives in Congress and the Presidency. See the mass censorship during Rona and the very open ‘resistance’ by the partisan bureaucracy to Trump.
It’s simply not a black and white issue as you seem to argue.
Like a big corporation it all comes down to how it is used, who is in charge etc. You mentioned things only the government could do like breaking up monopolies.
However for the purposes of a free public square could we add some public square laws? They have been in place since the start of our country. Marsh v Alabama would say yes we could.
Controlling and changing a bureaucracy to your liking takes never ending thankless, boring and often frustrating work (just look at what Obama looked like when he entered vs leaving the white house. That was because he applied himself to making the bureaucracy what it is today).
I am not ignoring the fact that Democrats could do it in the other direction. Actually making Democrats the only ones doing it means we are disarmed in the middle of a battle.
You are a ceo and want to be left alone, Republicans leave alone on days ending in Y, Democrats leave you alone if you push their agenda and ideologically purge your company…..
What has to happen in the federal bureaucracy is that it needs to be reformed, bad actors taken out and good ones put in.
A bureaucracy tool not a good or an evil. If we won’t use it for good you better believe the Democrats who know better than to implement anarchism as an ideology will bring about the pressure to do evil (which they will do no matter what). Deciding what is wrong is that the bureaucracy exists would be like if someone injures himself doing a construction project and you determine the case was hammers and hammers are bad.
The ONLY tool we have at our disposal in this society is government, it is the only thing we could take over, and the only power we could wield. Failure to wield it is a surrender.
Marsh v Alabama held that govt can’t preclude protected 1st amendment activity. It restricted govt power not expanded it.
I don’t disagree about using the tools of govt when ‘our side’ controls them but I very much disagree about the number, size and scope of those tools. Frankly much of what the Federal govt does either shouldn’t be done at all or would be better done by State/local govt or private charities.
Tell you what, when the Fed govt manages to perform at high degree of effectiveness and efficiency for the powers explicitly delegated by our Constitution then we see if they should be granted an expansion of power and authority into other spheres. Pipe dream I know.
Marsh v Alabama was about a privately owned company town, the state simply enforced it’s statute on trespassing for a company town. This is from the ruling
“We do not agree that the corporation’s property interests settle the question. The State urges, in effect, that
the corporation’s right to control the inhabitants of Chickasaw is coextensive with the right of a homeowner to regulate the conduct of his guests. We cannot accept that contention. Ownership does not always mean absolute dominion. The more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who use it.”
The extent you are allowed to control your own property, and the line between where it is your absolute right vs the public square was essential.
Furthermore State or local government is as much government as the federal government. Your mayor has the same claim to authority as your governor and your senator (“I was elected”).
I agree there are limits to what to do with the federal government.
Those limits are not “taxation is theft” or “get big government out of schools”.
Arguments for “big government out of schools” for example apply as much to the Florida State government as they do to the United States Federal Government.
I agree stay within the constitutional framework.
However the constitutional framework does not preclude us from establishing laws that empower the Marsh v Alabama ruling.
The crusade against big government has to be finished. Florida and Texas are larger than many independent countries, North Carolina has a larger population than Hungary.
Any government could be argued to be big government, being on crusade against “big government” means we can’t use it the way we are in this article.
Off the top of my head for using the federal government making it clear to big business that those juicy defense contracts are for people who do not employ racial religious or gender discrimination, and we aren’t using modern leftist definitions but the classical ones would change a lot of CEO tunes.
Danny,
The practical effect of the ruling in Marsh prohibited the govt from preventing folks walking around on sidewalks to handout leaflets. That the sidewalk is owned by the company or the local govt is immaterial to the practical effect (which the SCOTUS opinion notes); the govt was told to stop trying to prevent exercise of protected 1A activities.
I am happy to grant your point re the clarification in Marsh of the public square for both actual public property and the private property, which in reality and practice was already a de.facto public square. That however isn’t what you described as the ‘state simply enforcing their trespass statute’.
In fact the actions in Marsh point to exactly the problem with ever expanding govt. They become tangled in the private sphere as corporations grow larger as well. It’s much easier to regulate one or two companies in a given industry sector than many dozens. Bureaucracy likes less work.
The political masters of the bureaucracy like big corporations as well b/c they can provide far more graft and pay for more exotic and lavish boondoggle junkets. Big companies can donate far more to their political campaign coffers as well. Plus provide lucrative post political career opportunities on a board or two. Even hire their dumbass brother in law or cousins.
Unions both private and public also prefer birth govt for many of the same reasons. Company management, counter intuitively, also likes big unions. It’s much easier to negotiate one contract and be done in a one size fits all process with a union hierarchy that works with management to keep workers under control.
The triumvirate of big unions, big govt and big corporations are self reinforcing and usually work to protect each other from outside threats, even if they occasionally squabble among themselves. As an example; the big corporations want more regulations why? b/c their smaller competitors can’t afford to comply. Everyone wins. Competition gets crushed so big corporations makes more $, regulators get to claim a success to justify their phoney baloney jobs and the political class can point to the regulation and say ‘the public demanded we do something and we did, there’s the result, re-elect us’.
Sorry to respond late but
The entire case of Marsh v Alabama was centered on could a privately owned company ban things and control it’s property in a way that public townships couldn’t. Here is from the case itself
“In the stores the corporation had posted a notice which read as follows:
“This Is Private Property, and Without Written Permission, No Street, or House Vendor, Agent or Solicitation of Any Kind Will Be Permitted.”
That is the entire case, a privately owned company that owned the town as private property was imposing rules in the town contrary to the constitution. The State of Alabama had nothing to do with it, it merely enforced it’s own statute regarding when you are asked to leave someone else’ property (a statute that isn’t very different from what we have today).
From further into the case
The judges cited multiple cases already establishing the limits of state power over speech, which makes it clear that the company town aspect is what set the case apart.
You could see the law the state of Alabama imposed was just trespassing.
Again this is from the case itself
“She protested that the company rule could not be constitutionally applied so as to prohibit her from distributing religious writings. When she was asked to leave the sidewalk and Chickasaw, she declined. The deputy sheriff arrested her, and she was charged in the state court with violating Title 14, § 426 of the 1940 Alabama Code, which makes it a crime to enter or remain on the premises of another after having been warned not to do so. ”
In other words it was company not state of Alabama rules, the state of Alabama enforced laws against staying on someone else’ property without permission.
The practical effect of the ruling was to abridge the rights of company towns in favor of constitutional rights of people in or passing through them. What actual townships/lawful governments could do had long been settled law and the case didn’t impact those. The practical effect of the ownership doesn’t change that it is the public square as you could see from this
“Since these facilities are built and operated primarily to benefit the public, and since their operation is essentially a public function, it is subject to state regulation.”
Furthermore
“The more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who use it.”
In context ruling that it is irrelevant who owns the public space that your constitutional rights apply regardless was a major legal breakthrough.
I appreciate you agree with me in many ways about how we should use government, and I agree with you on staying within a constitutional framework for it.
However the rhetoric lends itself to a relapse into the same anarchism that got us into this mess in the first place.
We both agree that this story is an example of how yes we need government, yes government could be good, and no there are no definitions that could make the Kentucky AG not government, and the fortune 100 companies government yes?
Even the federal government you would agree with making it clear that all of those multi-billion dollar defense contracts are only for people who do not discriminate on race or gender, and that it will be our not their definition of discrimination, and if we have to there are Japanese companies operating in South Carolina with the power/ability to make all of those soft skinned logistics vehicles….that would change the practice of many major corporations very quickly.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 removed one’s Constitutional right to freedom of contract. The can of Wilton’s it opened was huge.
Worms… I need a new phone…
That isn’t even close to the worst typo here don’t worry.
You are right 1964 civil rights act did a lot of regulating the public square and private corporations.
It is hard to argue government can’t regulate when it actively does, and has done so for many decades.
The easy workaround is for the companies to hire based strictly on intelligence tests. If a new batch of minorities is desired, only hire those test takers scoring one standard deviation to the left on the bell curve.
I’m sorry this is a bit off topic, but I couldn’t let go of the adoration of this vile pig not only by posters here, but Tucker…
From From Page
Conservatives sympathetic to Tate should now be disabused of their affection for him. He has become a radical Muslim which means that he sanctions the destruction of a continent by extremist and illiberal peoples who largely remain hostile to assimilation and who wish to push their alien and primitive worldviews onto contemporary Europe. By supporting the Caliphate, he supports Sharia law. He gives voice to extremists who hate the West and whose vocational calling, among other things, is the destruction of the West.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/andrew-tates-betrayal-of-the-west/
Tate’s message of self improvement to men in the West, particularly young men is ok. To oversimplify it he tells dispirited men who are on a losing streak in life to stop blaming anyone but themselves. To get into physical shape, get a second job instead of playing video games and watching porn, to build up their finances. To become better, more proficient more attractive versions of themselves.
That’s a pretty good message for a generation or two of femanized males in the West. Will it solve all the problems these men face? No, but the increased self confidence will assist them generally in life, getting into better physical condition will decrease health problems and learning to prioritize work over leisure will assist them in repairing their financial situation. Unfortunately that’s not all there is to Tate.
Tate has some way out there views about women which I don’t agree with. Are some modern women just as he describes them? Narcissistic attention seekers posting bikini pics on line for validation from strangers and for some of them more libertine commercial purposes? Sure some, not even close to all. He paints with far too broad a brush and that’s not the worst of it as you point out.
IMO Tate is an amoral grifter whose good self improvement message to young men is overshadowed by the remainder of his viewpoints which as you correctly point out are totally incompatible with our modern society and absolutely unsuitable for Western culture. We can appreciate a small part of his views while rejecting the rest.
I agree.100% with your point about some ‘conservatives’ who admire him as a person v having an appreciation for a small part of his message. This is not good. It’s one thing to agree with his rational advice to men for self improvement. It’s quite another to embrace all of his views, some of which are ‘out there’, way, way out there. That’s a problem the center/right has developed recently, this tendency to hear a snippet they agree with but then fail to do their due diligence before fully embracing them. The reaction to RFK Jr by some on the center/right is an example of this.
I couldn’t agree more on Andrew Tate being bad, I think he did use the loverboy method, I think he is exactly what Romanian law enforcement says he is, and the reason is he is condemned out of his own mouth from his pimping hoes degree course, and in addition to what the Romanian government is charging him with (which includes sex trafficking) he cheats the desperate who need help out of their money with.
However you seem to be anti-Tate because he says he is a Muslim.
Before I even start Tate is not a Muslim, he is a narcissist who wanted to say he is religious but needed a religion people don’t know anything about.
But second everything you said about Islam is false. If we continue to be a hate Islam party we will continue coming across poorly.
I will not dignify claims that being Muslim means you want Europe destroyed with any further answer.
You would be wrong on islam on all accounts
I’m form Milwaukee, after WW2 we were inundated with former Nazis who claimed no alliance to Hitler, barley knew his name. .
They lied, they, the men, treated their German Shepard dogs better than their wives and children.
We had several in our neighborhood so I know first hand.
And I had 2 German Shepard’s, my dad fell in love with them
While fighting the Germans in Pattons 3rd Army,
Best dogs ever, but non the less, believe what you want about these “assimilated “ Muslims, your throat will not be the last to be sliced despite what you want to believe.
What immigration records show is that war brides from Axis countries marrying American soldiers became common to the point of not being worth talking about.
I am sorry you met an abusive father and bad husband who was a German, but that doesn’t mean he was a Nazi.
Right now you are talking to someone who is against mass third world migration because it changes the society, takes away workers leverage by making many more of them, and immigrants will naturally vote left until they have settled in and are secure in a more middle class place (so giving Democrats a massive electoral advantage).
However as stated I will not engage in dehumanizing immigrants who are almost all good people, and I will not discuss the idea of do Muslims want to blow up Europe any further.
Almost all nice people
Well nice people followthe law and don’t break into your country nor wrap their girls like mummies
I have a mosque across the street, was a church for 40 years and BAM it’s a mosque
Right in the center of a use to be conservative Texas county
First it was all young men, no women at all
Then it was some some. ALWAYS dressed in full burkas, only eyes showing
Next it was young boys, playing basketball , the church left the court behind.
And finally young girls, no more than 8,9, hard to tell, you know why? They to got to be wrapped up like a burrito, all of them
Hey maybe they were midgets..
Oh, and they weren’t allowed to play…
I’m calling BS
You do realize most central and south Americans are Roman Catholic right?
Furthermore I am unaware of when we became Germans.
What you have stated is simply not happening in Dearborn, Alexandria or any other American city with a major Muslim population. You are free to pretend we are in Germany, or you could try to win arguments against mass immigration with things that are relevant to THIS country instead of Germany. I’m not a German, you are not a German either, and the people you talk to are probably not Germans. America, that is the topic.
This seems like a great class action lawsuit opportunity. Any whitey who has been turned down for a job can make a case and use the civil courts to bury these fascists.
need some lawyers stepping up to represent whites passed over for promotion or who were forced out based on skin color.
The way to “get around” that is for employers to simply not include race on their applications or make note of it in their hiring decisions -“We could not possibly have used race as a factor in our hiring decisions, we don’t even collect that information. So, prove that race was a factor.”
The SCOTUS decision does not rest on Title VI but on the 14th Amendment. Concurrences including that of Thomas J. argue convincingly that Tltle VI is another ground.
And the letter makes a similar argument, invoking the spirit of those concurrences. But it does not say that the SCOTUS decision rests on Title VI, because it doesn’t
On the plus side, legislation by a Dem controlled Congress can’t change the basis of this decision. On the minus side, apparently the 14th Amendment argument does not clearly apply within corporations, and so they have to revert to the 1964 Civil Rights Act — a convincing argument but not the one in the majority opinion from SCOTUS.
I think all of them use explicit or implicit sex quotas too, which is also illegal, but I see no effort to curb that.