Yep. It's much easier to improve your DEI metrics by doing it illegally than it is by doing it legally.

I had an internship at a place like that and the first disabled woman of color to apply would have been practically guaranteed a job. Needless to say I didn't end up working there after the internship - if they're willing to break labor laws just to improve metrics then what's stopping them from trying to cheat their employees.

What do you mean by PoC? Because PoC hiring barely budged during the "DEI era" -- unless you meant Indian/Asian PoC. For example at Google over that 10 year era (from 2014 to 2024) Black+Latino hiring by 6% points. Indian/Asian increased by almost 15%.

Yes, even in my current job we don't explicitly hire for DEI type initiatives, but there is the general sense that we want to retain as many female or PoC staff as we can and we'd potentially go "above & beyond" for that.