An interesting race discrimination lawsuit

We’re going to have fantastic economic growth… as long as litigation over bathroom usage and skin color generate as much as output as machine tools.

Here’s an interesting lawsuit covered by the Daily Mail: Young woman with a mixture of “German, Irish and Italian descent” is told that she doesn’t qualify for a “Multicultural Undergraduate Internship” at the Getty Foundation.

Up until now private institutions have been able to select students, for example, based on skin color. It was public universities that ran into trouble and litigation when they operated race-based admissions programs. I’ll be interested to find out what the legal theory is here. The Getty is entirely private. Why can’t they say “We don’t want to hire any white people”?

If a court says “No, you can’t choose by race” what about other non-profit programs that are limited by age? (Disclosure: I helped set up one myself that would potentially become illegal in a changed legal regime.)

Related:

6 thoughts on “An interesting race discrimination lawsuit

  1. If you can self identify your gender, then why not your heritage/culture as well?

  2. RG – Because anyone could tell by looking at you that you weren’t the ethnicity you claim. Oh, wait…

  3. As we transition to “majority minority” the existing civil rights laws will inevitably backfire on their proponents (look for them to be changed at that point).

    “Ninety-seven percent of the bus and train operators at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority are black, with only six white women out of more than 3,000 drivers, according to Metro documents.”

    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/mar/26/metro-derailed-by-culture-of-complacence-incompete/?page=all

    Note that this was raised in the context of a complaint by (white) women. White men are still the “privileged” class so any discrimination against them doesn’t count – they don’t even bother to measure it.

  4. An internship is employment. While private institutions like clubs may discriminate based on race for membership, they may not discriminate for employment. I thought this was very well established case law. Not sure how Getty hopes to win this.

Comments are closed.