Rulings on affirmative action and free speech may not play nicely with diversity initiatives
ANALYSIS The US Supreme Court has issued two decisions that threaten to upend efforts by tech companies to become more diverse, equitable, and inclusive.
On June 29, 2023, the Supremes ruled [PDF] that the admissions programs at Harvard College and the University of North Carolina violate the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause by using race as an admission criterion.
The following day, the top court decided [PDF] that the First Amendment forbids Colorado, through its Anti-Discrimination Act, from forcing a web designer to create content expressing a view with which she disagrees – a website for a wedding involving participants other than one man and one woman, per the plaintiff’s religious beliefs. Never mind that no such scenario occurred, it’s now a legal precedent.
Silicon Valley, as has been widely reported, has a problem with diversity, equity, and inclusion, commonly abbreviated as DEI. It’s an expensive problem – lack of support for DEI drives employees away, costing US companies an estimated $16 billion annually in employee replacement costs, according to a 2017 report [PDF] from the Kapor Center for Social Impact.
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