GoodOwl
The 1 Hoo Knocks

Posts: 29,283
Joined: Nov 2010
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I Root For: New Horizons
Location: Planiverse
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RE: Why? Real answer is obvious, but not supposed to say because Blue Team Cries
Quote: Starbucks paid Eric Holder, who charges up to $2,295 an hour for such work, to teach them how to be less racist. He told them to give racial preferences to minorities. They're now getting sued for anti-white discrimination. https://t.co/ZcbKIalIki pic.twitter.com/bZqAwtCQ85
— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) July 27, 2023
Starbucks Hired Eric Holder To Conduct a ‘Civil Rights Audit.’ The Policies He Blessed Got the Coffee Maker Sued
Companies have asked top law firms to review their diversity policies. Some firms are telling them to violate civil rights law.
Quote: Holder—who has charged as much as $2,295 an hour for such work—issued a final report in 2021 that outlined the steps Starbucks had taken to promote "equity." They included tying executive pay to diversity targets, setting spending goals for "diverse suppliers," and launching a mentorship program for "BIPOC" employees, which Holder pressed the company to expand. Each initiative, he wrote, demonstrated the coffee maker’s "commitment to civil rights and equal treatment."
But one year later, Starbucks was fending off a civil rights lawsuit over precisely the programs Holder had blessed. The lawsuit, which is still ongoing and was filed last August by the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative nonprofit that is also a Starbucks shareholder, argued that the programs violate non-discrimination laws as well as the company’s fiduciary duties. Such claims may have come as a surprise to Starbucks executives: At no point did Holder’s report address the legality of the policies at issue.
Quote:But critics say the assessments have exposed clients to the very risks they’re meant to alleviate. Covington’s audits alone endorse a plethora of programs many lawyers, including current and former government officials, say are illegal, from a minorities-only scholarship at BlackRock to a bonus scheme linking executive pay to diversity targets at Verizon.
These programs "are lawsuits waiting to happen," said Noah Peters, the former solicitor of the Federal Labor Relations Authority, who has represented numerous government employees in discrimination lawsuits.
Some conservative groups are working to ensure the wait won’t be long. In April the law firm America First Legal filed a complaint against BlackRock with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, an agency that enforces workplace discrimination laws, alleging that its race-based scholarship violated the Civil Rights Act.
At least one of that agency’s five commissioners seems to agree: Andrea Lucas, who was appointed in 2020 by former president Donald Trump, said that while she could only speak hypothetically, the kinds of programs Covington blessed are on thin legal ice.
Race-restricted internships, fellowships, and mentorship programs are "generally unlawful," she said, "including programs where participants receive offers for a company’s general internship program (open to all applicants) but also receive a unique benefit like an expedited interview process" or "additional compensation beyond what other interns receive." Those criteria describe almost verbatim the BlackRock Founders Scholarship—established before Covington’s audit and praised therein—which offers "diverse" internship applicants an "accelerated interview process" and an award of $20,000.
But critics say the assessments have exposed clients to the very risks they’re meant to alleviate. Covington’s audits alone endorse a plethora of programs many lawyers, including current and former government officials, say are illegal, from a minorities-only scholarship at BlackRock to a bonus scheme linking executive pay to diversity targets at Verizon.
These programs "are lawsuits waiting to happen," said Noah Peters, the former solicitor of the Federal Labor Relations Authority, who has represented numerous government employees in discrimination lawsuits.
Some conservative groups are working to ensure the wait won’t be long. In April the law firm America First Legal filed a complaint against BlackRock with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, an agency that enforces workplace discrimination laws, alleging that its race-based scholarship violated the Civil Rights Act.
At least one of that agency’s five commissioners seems to agree: Andrea Lucas, who was appointed in 2020 by former president Donald Trump, said that while she could only speak hypothetically, the kinds of programs Covington blessed are on thin legal ice.
Race-restricted internships, fellowships, and mentorship programs are "generally unlawful," she said, "including programs where participants receive offers for a company’s general internship program (open to all applicants) but also receive a unique benefit like an expedited interview process" or "additional compensation beyond what other interns receive." Those criteria describe almost verbatim the BlackRock Founders Scholarship—established before Covington’s audit and praised therein—which offers "diverse" internship applicants an "accelerated interview process" and an award of $20,000.
There are nonetheless signs that the audits won’t be long for the post-affirmative action world. Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) warned 51 law firms this month that Congress could investigate them for blessing illegal diversity programs, a threat that followed demands by 13 Republican attorneys general for Fortune 100 companies to scrap their race-based hiring practices.
"If you choose not to do so," the officials wrote in letters to companies, "know that you will be held accountable."
Covington itself read clients the riot act in the wake of the High Court’s decision, issuing a client alert that was far less sanguine about racial preferences than its audits have been. Quoting an article by Lucas—the Equal Employment Opportunity Commissioner who warned against the sort of policies Holder blessed—the firm encouraged employers to "take a hard look" at their diversity programs.
"‘[R]ace-restricted internships, race-restricted mentoring, [and] race-focused promotion decisions,’" Covington said, "may already be ‘violating the law.’"
DIE is actual racism in action. DIE was created and brought to you by the same Democratic Party that gave you the KKK, lynching, segregation, increased poverty, et cetera....
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