[tachyoff]

I’m not a lawyer, so I’m curious (and I can’t read the article): are quotas legal? Irrespective of their efficacy or morality, they must’ve held up in court, right? I thought it was fairly obvious that organizations have minority quotas. Then again, I also know that discrimination against ANY gender and ANY skin color (including male and white) is illegal, which was born out recently when Google’s decision to fire a rather opinionated individual who regularly derided straight, white men was upheld. Political beliefs are not a protected class, and you can absolutely be fired for them (although I think in this case the person was let go because railing against vast swaths of your coworkers is disruptive and rude, even if they’re “cishet white boys”).

[nova22033]

relevant part of the item linked

Employers are allowed to undertake initiatives to promote diversity hiring, employment lawyers say. But under Title VII, the federal antidiscrimination law, employers aren’t allowed to make hiring decisions based on race and gender among other protected classes. That means they can’t employ practices like hiring quotas based on race or only hiring one type of minority candidate, attorneys say. Such practices would also run afoul of California laws.

[wqnt]

I'm not a lawyer either. But I remember that explicit racial quota are illegal.But in another precedence, diversity is considered a valid objective. So having preference that favor minority for the sake of diversity is OK. That is the case for a lot of hiring and admission processes now: No explicit quota, but a soft preference towards diversity, which usually means favoring under-represented racial and gender groups.