Many companies stepped up their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in recent years after pressure from shareholders and proxy advisory firms. Some of these efforts were a well-intentioned response to racially charged events such as the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020.
Unfortunately, DEI efforts at some companies were overzealous to the extent they could be viewed as giving a discriminatory preference to a particular minority or group, as Shawe Rosenthal lawyer Fiona Ong recalled about one particularly egregious case.
"I thought, 'Holy cow, where was their in-house counsel on this? Where was their outside counsel?' Those were flagrant violations of Title VII," Ong recalled. "It was just astonishing to me how many companies were making those kinds of statements."
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