In 2018, Jerry Brown, then California governor, signed a bill requiring corporate boards to include a high percentage of women.
Now a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge has determined that the state failed to show that “gender-based classification was necessary to boost California’s economy, improve opportunities for women in the workplace, and protect California taxpayers, public employees, pensions and retirees.”
No news yet on whether the state will appeal.
In 2018, Brown had conceded that the law was probably doomed to be judged unconstitutional. But he apparently regarded questions of legality or constitutionality as irrelevant.
“It’s high time corporate boards include the people who constitute more than half the ‘persons’ in America,” he burbled in his signing message.
Fines for disobedience were to be steep: $100,000 for initial violations, $300,000 for subsequent violations.
Of course, it is neither immoral nor a crime to choose a man instead of a woman for a post. Making specific hires criminal depending upon the complexion of a business’s other hires amounts to the politicization of everything, swapping the goals of business for the goals of ideologues. It is destructive of individual rights and the requirements of conducting business profitably to compel employers choosing personnel to be guided by any considerations other than relevant qualifications. Or by any assessment but their own.
Managers of all non-government organizations should be free to use their own best judgment in hiring and contracting, whether the work involved is that of clerk, CEO, or board member.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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3 replies on “Quota Requirement Overturned”
With the notion of gender identity, everything is up for grabs. After all, we now have judges who don’t know what defines a woman. Now if you feel like a woman, you are one.
CA has long been known as the land of fruits and nuts.
Unfortunately, too much of what happens there spreads to the rest of the country.
In the early history of the American republic, executives with veto power were considered obligated to exercise it against unconstitutional legislation, and they were reluctant to exercise it otherwise.