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This article comes from KramerLevin
Efforts to increase diversity at the top of public companies remain at the forefront of corporate consciousness and governance. As we have previously reported (including here and here), stakeholder interest in diversified leadership has led to a series of initiatives over the past several years to encourage firms to have more directors and officers from historically underrepresented communities, as well as greater gender diversity. But such efforts have also met with legal challenges from other interest groups who view these initiatives as misguided or unlawful “reverse” discrimination. We update and review some of these challenges below. While the litigation picture is so far somewhat mixed, we believe public company directors, under pressure from their major stakeholders and believing that diversity is, in fact, in the best interests of their firms, will continue to exercise their business judgment to expand diversity in governance and the workforce.
