Straight, White Female Loses Bias Claim Over Law Firm’s Summer Associate Diversity Program
“supplies no reason to believe she would have remained interested in, let alone eligible for, an internship for first-year law students”
Why does the firm even have a summer associate diversity program?
From the ABA Journal:
Straight, White Female Loses Bias Claim Over King & Spalding’s Summer Associate Diversity Program
A straight, white female lawyer can’t sue King & Spalding over exclusion from a diversity hiring program for summer associates because of a “paucity of allegations” that she was ready and able to apply, a federal judge ruled Monday.
The plaintiff, Sarah Spitalnick, said she didn’t apply for the position while she was a 1L at the University of Baltimore School of Law because she thought that it would have been a futile gesture. The February 2021 job ad that she saw for the program said candidates “must have an ethnically or culturally diverse background or be a member of the LGBT community.”
But U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar of the District of Maryland said mere allegations about being ready and able to apply aren’t enough. Spitalnick’s lawsuit says nothing about steps that she took to apply or inquire about the position or about considering similar positions, he said.
Spitalnick “faces an uphill climb to plead an actual or imminent injury—a climb she ultimately fails to summit,” Bredar wrote in the Feb. 24 opinion.
Reuters and Law360 covered the decision.
Bredar noted that Spitalnick sued more than three years after she saw the ad. She wasn’t able to show that she was ready and able to apply in 2021 or that she remained ready and able when she sued, he said. It “strains credulity” to think that the job posting was still up in 2024, and she was already a lawyer at that time.
Spitalnick “supplies no reason to believe she would have remained interested in, let alone eligible for, an internship for first-year law students,” wrote Bredar, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.
The King & Spalding program was sponsored by the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity, a third-party organization.
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Comments
The Standing Game.
“Oh well, Reverend Morrison … in your policy… in your policy… here we are. It states quite clearly that no claim you make will be paid.”
–MONTY PYTHON
Likely white liberal woman bit by the victim totem poll of intersectionality she supported,
Sad…another female victim of the system of preferences. Reminds me of a case not long ago in which a woman who ran a business (started with money given her by her father) and had received business advantages because her business was woman-owned, complained and sued when she ran across a set of advantages for which she was not eligible: because she was not “minority”. So sad. So unfair.
— This message brought to you by the Anybody-But-Heterosexual-White-Males Foundation
While DEI is bad, this woman took no steps to prove her allegation. Pretty basic error, speaks to her ability as a lawyer.
Why should a private company that doesn’t accept federal funding have to give equal weight to all job applicants? If they want to hire imbeciles, they can. If they want to hire one-eyed purple imbeciles who have six fingers on their right hands, they can. If they specifically want to ~exclude~ people with IQs over 105, they can.
What they cannot do is force clients to use their services.
This woman is going to have a tough time getting hired if and when she graduates. Given her apparent failure to understand how the law works, passing the bar exam isn’t going to be a breeze for her either.
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