Piggy,
I know easter is just recently behind us, but a little surprised to see you resurrect this thread. My point is that DEI, properly run, doesn't have to discriminate on race at all. There are an infinite variety of crosses that people have to bear, and how they do so is the important point.
But separately, since we're on the topic, if you
really want something interesting to watch on the trendlines from a legal perspective consistent with your thinking (or even to kvetch over in a separate post!), take a look at the $17MM civil False Claims Act settlement that DOJ recently entered into the other day with IBM.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/ibm-...-discrimination-through-illegal-dei-practices. Now to be clear, $17MM is a drop in the bucket as FCA settlements go and just a cost to make it go away, and I'm 100% certain this was entered into as much to send a signal as anything else. (Indeed, the settlement contains no future conduct remedies to my knowledge, just money.)
That said:
1. To my knowledge (and setting aside the facts), this is the first time that a corporate DEI program was alleged to violate the standard government contracts clauses and representations relating to Title VI compliance, and thereby the FCA. These clauses are quite literally incorporated into every government contract and grant.
2. Here's the potentially explosive kicker: the False Claims Act contains qui tam provisions which allow individual private party whistleblowers to bring lawsuits on behalf of the government, and individual whistleblowers get a piece of the proceeds of the lawsuit (usually up to 20%). The "proceeds" are calculated as 3x actual damages (eg, the amount of the federal contract payments), plus like $20k per invoice submitted by the contractor, plus attorneys fees. Some day this will all be litigated (eg, materiality of conditions to payment, whether DEI as alleged actually violates the law, etc.), but in the near term, DOJ is sending a signal to the whistleblower and plaintiffs' employment attorney bar that it is open for business and that they have a new and extraordinarily powerful tool at their disposal. And those tools are likely to allow the plaintiffs bar to make a lot more money than a simple wrongful termination suit. Disgruntled white guys may be the new plaintiffs.