Court Rules California’s Corporate Diversity Law Unconstitutional

A Los Angeles court determined on April 2 that a California law requiring certain workplace boardroom quotas of underrepresented communities is unconstitutional.

Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit (pdf) in early October 2020 arguing that any spending of taxpayer funds or taxpayer-paid resources on the quota law is “illegal under the California Constitution.”

The lawsuit was filed days after California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it into law. The measure required publicly traded companies to have a minimum of one director from an “underrepresented community” on its board by the end of last year and potentially more such directors by the end of 2022, depending on the number of members on a given board.

According to the law, a “director from an underrepresented community” refers to “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.”

California’s Assembly Appropriations Committee has noted that AB 979 “will result in ongoing costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to gather demographic information and compile a report on this data on its internet website,” Judicial Watch stated in its complaint.- READ MORE