Law pros urge feds to ban caste-based discrimination

In a letter addressed to the chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Monday, 12 groups and a number of law and other professionals urged the federal agency to interpret Title VII to ban caste-based discrimination.

In 2019, more than 70% of H1-B visa petitions were filed by Indian workers, according to data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Because of these numbers, tech firms are "especially prone to caste discrimination in the workplace," which largely impact people who are part of the lowest tier in India's caste system, the Dalits, the letter stated.

"According to a 2018 survey from Equality Labs, 67% of Dalits in the United States 'reported being treated unfairly at their (American) workplace because of their caste,'" the letter said. "A recent report has revealed that there are more than 250 complaints of caste-based discrimination from employees in major multinational companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Google, Dell, Uber, Netflix, etc. These reports expose cases of verbal and physical assault, workplace discrimination, sexual harassment, and caste slurs."

The group behind the letter - which included the International Commission on Dalit Rights, Hindus for Humans Rights, South Asian Americans Leading Together, and individuals including law professors - acknowledged Title VII of the Civil Rights Act does not explicitly ban discrimination based on caste. But the logic that a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling used last June to extend Title VII protections to LGBTQ workers seems to extend protections to workers in lower castes, too, the group argued.

In Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, the high court held that Title VII - which explicitly bans employment discrimination based on their race, color, religion, sex or national origin - should be interpreted to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity since it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against them based on their sex. Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, 2020 DJDAR 5681.

"Just as being a homosexual or transgender person is inextricably bound up with that person's sex, being a Dalit is inextricably bound up with being of Asian descent," according to the letter, which noted Title VII's ban on discrimination based on race and national origin extends to Asians.

Attention to caste discrimination in the U.S. has grown in recent years as tech companies began fielding complaints about the issue. Last year, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a lawsuit against Cisco Systems Inc. alleging the company discriminated against a Dalit worker. The case is pending before a court of appeal. Department of Fair Employment and Housing v. Cisco Systems Inc. et al., H048910 (Cal. App. 6th Dist., filed March 1, 2021).

In a motion filed in trial court in November, attorneys for Cisco asked the court to strike portions of the plaintiff's complaint since "caste" is not one of the classes protected by California's Fair Employment and Housing Act, the state statute that bans employment discrimination.