Activist behind Harvard race case takes aim at Calif. board laws

(Reuters) - Edward Blum, the affirmative action opponent behind the lawsuit challenging Harvard University's consideration of race in student admissions, took aim at California laws mandating gender and racial diversity on corporate boards in a new lawsuit.

Alliance For Fair Board Recruitment, a non-profit Blum formed this year, on Monday sought to invalidate the laws requiring publicly held companies headquartered in the state to have a minimum number of women and individuals of underrepresented racial groups or sexual orientations on their boards.

"These laws are unconstitutional and patronizing social engineering," the group said in the lawsuit filed in Los Angeles federal court.

A spokesperson for California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, who the group sued because her office enforces the two laws, did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Blum said in an interview that the decision to form an organization, as he had to represent applicants in the Harvard admissions case, was to protect the group's members from negative social repercussions.

Alliance For Fair Board Recruitment includes around 10 men with executive or other experience that would qualify them to serve on boards, Blum said.

"Because they are white and because they are male, their chances have become diminished," he said.

Over the past three years, the California legislature has passed laws going farther than any other state in requiring boards to diversify.

Women on Boards, or SB 826, requires any publicly held company headquartered in the state to have between one and three women on the board, depending on its size, by the end of this year.

Its companion, AB 979, requires companies to include at least one board member who self-identifies as a member of an "underrepresented community" by the end the year, and between one and three such members by the end of 2022, based on the number of seats on the board.

The bill defines the term to include Black, Latino, Asian and Native American individuals, as well as those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

The lawsuit alleges that both statutes violate the Constitution's equal protection clause. Improved corporate performance is not conclusively tied to board diversity and does not qualify as a compelling governmental interest, the group said.

The complaint also claims that both statutes illegally supersede the laws of the states in which companies are incorporated.

The group further alleges that AB 979 violates the Civil Rights Act by favoring some racial groups and requiring shareholders to discriminate.

Blum's is not the first legal challenge to California's progressive board laws.

Both face litigation in California state court, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently revived a federal case filed by a shareholder, saying he had a plausible claim that SB 826 required him to engage in sex-based discrimination.

The case is Alliance For Fair Board Recruitment v. Weber, No. 21-cv-05644, U.S. District Court, Central District Of California.

For the group: Bradley Benbrook and Stephen Duvernay of Benbrook Law Group; and C. Boyden Gray, Jonathan Berry, Michael Buschbacher and Jordan Smith of Boyden Gray & Associates

Read more:

9th Circuit revives challenge to California women on boards law

California's new board diversity law challenged by conservative group

U.S. Supreme Court seeks Biden views on Harvard admissions dispute

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