A state judge’s decision to strike down a law requiring company boards to appoint women directors was welcomed by Judicial Watch founder Tom Fitton.
“This decision eviscerates the basis and the dishonesty behind the gender quota effort, which they say they are doing for reasons that the court found not to be supported by the record,” said Fitton, whose organization sued the state on behalf of California citizens in 2019. “None of the reasons in themselves justified mandating discrimination, but they weren't even honest about that.”
As previously reported in the Southern California Record, the California law that Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Maureen Duffy-Lewis disbanded mandated that corporate boards of public companies headquartered in California appoint at least two or three women or face financial consequences.
In the lawsuit against the secretary of state, plaintiffs Robin Crest, Earl De Vries, and Judy De Vries alleged that quotas, created under Senate Bill 826, requiring a company’s board of directors to include women, violate the Equal Protection Clause of the California Constitution.
“You had the government deciding to oppose anti-discrimination laws for radical policy reasons,” Fitton told the Southern California Record. “It's the most significant attack on our anti-discrimination laws and the constitutional basis for them in modern history.”
Judicial Watch attorneys argued that any expenditure of taxpayer funds or taxpayer-financed resources on gender quotas is illegal.
Judge Duffy-Lewis agreed.
“During the trial, the Court found that Defendant was unable to present specific evidence of actual, unlawful discrimination against any specific woman by any specific corporation subject to S.B. 826,” the judge wrote in the May 13 opinion. “The Court found the evidence offered by defense tended to support gender parity and proactively putting more women on boards demonstrated that the Legislature's actual purpose was gender-balancing, not remedying discrimination.”
SB 826 also required corporate boards headquartered in California to report to the state how they are meeting the mandates or potentially face fines.
“The decision doesn't change the makeup of any boards but it would prohibit boards from considering improper reasons to hire someone which is their sex,” Fitton added. “If [the Secretary of State] appeals, they appeal and then we'll dispute it further up line but in the meantime, the law is enjoined.”
On April 1, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Terry Green struck down a similar law that requires companies statewide to appoint people of color to their boards of directors, according to media reports.
“The difficulty is that the Legislature is thinking in group terms," Green wrote in his opinion. "But the California Constitution protects the rights of individuals to equal treatment. Before the Legislature may require that members of one group be given certain board seats, it must first try to create neutral conditions under which qualified individuals from any group may succeed. That attempt was not made in this case.”