April 2022

Sometimes there is a Victory!

Remember the Legislature’s passage of the “diversity mandate?”  All public companies headquartered in the state were ordered to include at least one member of an “underrepresented” race, ethnicity or sexual orientation and two to three for larger boards.  Superior Court Judge Terry Green filed a 24 page opinion in which he stated that the Legislature “is thinking in group terms.”  Yet the California Constitution “protects the right of individuals to equal treatment.”  Equal protection “rights are individual rights, not group rights.” The judge said that California’s stated “generic interest in healthy business”  doesn’t suffice as compelling and “there is precious little indication that the Legislature seriously considered or attempted other intermediate and race-neutral measures.”  The judge concluded:  “Only in very particular cases should discrimination be remedied by more discrimination.”   Thank you Judge Green for blocking the corporate board diversity mandate.       Three cheers for the judge!