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Comment by polski-g | Hacker News Reader

It is unlawful to even consider protected characteristics in any employment decision. You can't look at characteristics for hiring, firing, promoting, not promoting, or even transferring.

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I am skeptical that a company the size of Twilio wouldn't run this by employment lawyers first. Do you have any sources to cite here?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964

"The U.S. Supreme Court has recognized an exception to Title VII’s protections from discrimination in industries where employers can establish a historical imbalance or disparity in the workforce. In United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO-CLC v. Weber, 443 US 193 (1979), the Supreme Court considered an affirmative action program that was implemented to increase the amount of black skilled craft workers. Half of the positions in the training program were reserved for black workers. Because this training scheme was intended to eliminate longstanding patterns of racial segregation and Title VII “did not inten[d] to prohibit the private sector from taking effective steps” to ensure the goal to prevent discrimination was implemented, the program was upheld. This same theory was applied to the underrepresentation of women in Johnson v. Transp. Agency, Santa Clara Cnty., Cal., 480 U.S. 616 (1987). A male worker had challenged the agency’s selection of a female worker over him. Here, the court upheld the Santa Clara County Transportation Agency’s plan to “achieve a statistically measurable yearly improvement in hiring and promoting minorities and women in job classification where they are underrepresented.” Where no specific number or quota was required but short-range goals were implemented and adjusted yearly, the agency could permissibly take sex into account as one factor in deciding whether to promote women."

source: http://www.epspros.com/news-resources/white-papers/2020/the-...

All companies run everything by their lawyers and still they are found doing illegal stuff from time to time.

Of course. Sometimes companies do things that are blatantly illegal and they know it. Usually they don't put these things down in SEC filings. For example, I'm sure that many hedge funds routinely trade on insider information and know that what they are doing is illegal. Most are smart enough not to publicize this.

In this case, my point is not that this is legal or illegal. My point is that they probably ran this by their lawyers and at the very least those lawyers probably said "yeah, you have a reasonable case if this goes to court". If the lawyers said "yeah, this is definitely illegal, you are going to get sued, it's an easy case and you are going to lose", then sure, it's possible that Twilio decided to do this anyway, but I don't see that as likely. They probably have at least a legal theory on why this is permissible.

Checking to make sure you're not illegally discriminating in the layoffs process is not "considering protected characteristics." FFS...

Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32857237

You're assuming that being anti-racist just means checking to make sure you're not illegally discriminating.

My guess is someone sues and we'll all find out what exactly constitutes an anti-racist lens.

This is completely untrue. Google “adverse impact hr” for a quick education on this topic.

Why do you think this phrase, which describes the outcome, makes the action any less illegal?

No it’s not. It’s illegal to discriminate based on that consideration. It’s not illegal to take someone’s race, sexuality, or any other protected class into consideration.

When you hire a man, it’s not like you don’t know they’re a man. The issue would be if you ONLY hire men (intentionally or not).

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