Ask HN: Is it legal for companies to intentionally discriminate in recruiting?
4 by svloophole | 6 comments on Hacker News.
In my own experience, and in talking to some friends, it seems that many Silicon Valley tech companies have devised a legal loophole for discrimination, in an effort to bump up their "Diversity" numbers. The CEOs are facing lot of social shaming for not having more "URMs" and female employees but it's illegal to actively reject candidates merely for being white/asian and male, which make up the majority of qualified candidates for many roles. So, the "trick" seems to be that CEOs are telling their recruiters to actively recruit candidates that are non-white/east asian and non-male as much as possible. So, for example, they might recruit 10 candidates for a role, and make sure that 80% of them are "URMs" or female, based on looking at their LinkedIn profile picture/name. In other words, they very deliberately pass over qualified candidates on the basis of them being white/east asian males. Clearly this is racial/gender discrimination but, by virtue of the candidates not knowing they were passed over, and not having actually been interviewed, it seems to be legal? The discriminated-against people have no standing because they can't prove anything, at least not without going to court, and that would require standing I assume. The hushed tones that people discuss these policies seems to indicate that they know it's legally grey, but I'm curious how legal it is.