Comment by btilly | Hacker News Reader

Comment by btilly | Hacker News Reader

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That isn't how it works. The issue is that cases are not brought because it is hard to prove it illegal.

https://www.equalitylabs.org/castesurvey documents that 2/3 of Dalits in the USA report being mistreated at work. I'm only aware of one lawsuit about it. That was the CISCO case. No federal agencies got involved because it does not fall into race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetic information. Therefore discriminating by caste is legal under federal law.

California may be a different story. The case against CISCO is the only one ever brought. You can read about it at https://hulr.org/spring-2021/caste-in-cisco-understanding-ca....

Remember. Only case ever brought, when surveys indicate that 2/3 of Dalits are discriminated against on the job in the USA. And it is definitely legal under federal law.

In the absence of any case, ever, saying that it is illegal to discriminate on caste in the USA, it is almost certainly generally legal.

>In the absence of any case, ever, saying that it is illegal to discriminate on caste in the USA, it is almost certainly generally legal.

That's not how it works. You're conflating court cases vs court decisions.

> documents that 2/3 of Dalits in the USA report being mistreated at work

That's an online self reported survey conducted by a partisan foundation. It certainly didn't cover all Dalits in the US, nor was it a random or representative sample.

If there were actually that many people facing discrimination, there would be more court cases, and then you can point to court decisions potentially finding that discrimination by caste is or is not illegal. The absence of such cases and decisions could also be caused by no one being discriminated against on the basis of caste.

As linked in some sibling comments, the CISCO case was withdrawn because they didn't find discrimination and were actually discriminating and making assumptions about the alleged perpetuators and publicizing it.

Not all forms of discrimination would be illegal even if discrimination on the basis of caste was banned. For example, a Dalit in the poll might have reported as discrimination that a coworker didn't invite them to their home after work but invited a different coworker who wasn't a Dalit. That happens all the time in the US and the world on the basis of race, sex etc. and certainly is not illegal even if provable. Just like the super common racial discrimination in dating that hasn't been made illegal. The examples given on the site in your link are more on the lines of those, stories about being invited to a religious ceremony and not allowed to share meat based food.

That's not how it works. You're conflating court cases vs court decisions.

No, I just understand how precedence works in a Common Law system.

First, by default things are legal unless specifically forbidden. Being forbidden is based on some theory based upon the law, the Constitution, and a web of precedent called Common Law.

In this case, there is no law specifically written covering caste. There is no precedent regarding caste. Therefore any case alleging that it is illegal to discriminate on caste must be based on an untested theory based on the law. There is no particular reason to believe that a judge will accept your theory about the implications of the law, rather than some other theory that the other side comes up with.

If you take your theory to court, the other side will almost certainly come up with an opposing case. The judge will be weighing two theories. And likely will also be presented with the argument that the untested theory that discriminating on caste is illegal is untested exactly because other lawyers have consistently concluded that the law doesn't say that it is illegal.

This argument is not without merit. I do not know of a clear argument from the law. Maybe there is one that I don't know. But if there was, then I'd expect some prosecuting attorney to have brought it long ago. It doesn't help my confidence that the only attorneys to have brought such a case turned out (as you point out) to have been stretching the facts. What are the odds that they were also stretching the law?

Therefore the lack of cases really is evidence that the law really doesn't cover caste. (I'm quite confident that federal law doesn't cover it.)

https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/facpub/3061/

>Therefore the lack of cases really is evidence that the law really doesn't cover caste. (I'm quite confident that federal law doesn't cover it.)

Or the lack of cases is because it's very rare or even non-existent in a workplace environment, based on many comments here, including my own, and it happens more in the personal sphere like how there's strong race based preferences in dating and friendship in the US. That's not prosecutable.

> Therefore discriminating by caste is legal under federal law

I’m curious if those people filed a lawsuit of any kind? I would imagine that discriminating against them would fall under in-group vs out-group type of discrimination and companies discourage this. Workers get unhappy about work and other co-workers, this doesn’t mean laws were broken.

What would they sue for?

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