TheNational Center for Public Policy Research may have found a brilliant solutionto the problem of woke corporate America- they are taking Starbucks to
court, arguing its discriminatory policies put shareholders at risk- Turning
the very woke programs they enacted favoring certain races against them, and
all of them at once, rather than piecemeal.
Perhaps we have finally figured out the terrain we are fighting on and
how to fight back.
The lawsuit, filed on August 30 by the public interest law firm the American Civil Rights Project, will showcase a novel legal approach to challenging the race-conscious policies of publicly owned corporations. Typically, the plaintiffs in such cases are employees or job applicants who say the policies violated their civil rights. Here, however, the plaintiff is a conservative nonprofit, the National Center for Public Policy Research, that owns shares in Starbucks.
The group is arguing that the coffee giant’s programs endanger "Starbucks and the interests of all its shareholders"—which the company’s officers have a legal duty to protect—by inviting "nearly endless" civil rights litigation that could force Starbucks to pay out damages.
If they are successful, corporations would have to steer clear of racial preference policies of any type- and go back to being race blind. What an improvement that would be!
I have been expecting fiduciary-responsibility lawsuits on these grounds to happen for several years. In most cases, they will probably be hard to win: the company can come up with all kinds of arguments, valid or not, as to why they *thought* that the policy was in the best interests of shareholders. Whether convincing to a court or not, probably depends on the court.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, if done right, the discovery phase can be illuminating, even lead to a moderately favorable settlement.
ReplyDeleteEric Hines
That's all well and good - until Blackrock, Vanguard, and Fidelity fund managers vote their substantial blocks of shares.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, interestingly, these three billion-share titans have recently (apparently) decided to stop supporting ESG initiatives.
Well, it's sure worth a shot.
ReplyDeleteSorry about the white background part- didn't look like that in preview.
Fixed it, that's *much* better.
ReplyDelete