The judge ruled the measure broke California's constitutional equal protection clause, according to a summary judgment received by Judicial Watch, a right-leaning legal group that filed a permanent injunction against the law.
"[The ruling] declared unconstitutional one of the most blatant and significant attacks in the modern era on constitutional prohibitions against discrimination,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told the Associated Press.
The law, signed in 2020 by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, needed at least one minority person to serve on the board of directors in all companies with an executive office in California by the end of 2021. It also ordered that two minority people should serve on the board in companies with four to nine directors and three minority members should serve on a board with over nine directors.
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“When we talk about racial justice, we talk about empowerment, we talk about power, and we need to talk about seats at the table,” Newsom said when signing the law.
Three hundred out of 700 corporations had obeyed the law, according to a “Diversity on Boards” report released last month. Still, over half did not offer the proper disclosure statement.
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Those discovered to violate the diversity law could face $100,000 for the first violation and $300,000 for repeated offenses.
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The diversity law followed a similar law in 2018 signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown mandated female participation in boards of directors for companies located within the state, though he admitted the law would be hard to defend and could be overturned. A similar lawsuit by Judicial Watch is contesting the 2018 law. That case is pending.
Judge Reed O’Connor issued a preliminary injunction to stop the Biden administration from discriminating on account of race or ethnicity in administering a provision of the American Rescue Plan providing “socially disadvantaged” farmers, which the Department of Agriculture considers to be any who are African American, Native American, Hispanic, Asian American, or Pacific Islander, with loan forgiveness of up to 120% of their federal Farm Service Agency loan balances as of Jan. 1.
The injunction came at the request of Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller and two classes of petitioning farmers, which O’Connor certified in his Thursday order, who argued the program was racially discriminatory against nonminority farmers.
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“Plaintiffs held qualifying FSA loans on January 1, 2021, but are white, making them ineligible for the funds under the [American Rescue Plan Act],” the plaintiffs said, arguing in an April 26 class action complaint filed in federal district court in the Northern District of Texas that the loan forgiveness program violates the Constitution and other federal equal protection laws.
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O’Connor ruled that the plaintiffs are likely to prevail on equal protection grounds in halting the program, determining that “plaintiffs are suffering a continuing and irreparable injury based on the direct effects of the race- and ethnicity-based application process.”
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