42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(j) says:

> Nothing contained in this subchapter shall be interpreted to require any employer, employment agency, labor organization, or joint labor-management committee subject to this subchapter to grant preferential treatment to any individual or to any group because of the race, color, religion, sex, or national origin of such individual or group on account of an imbalance which may exist with respect to the total number or percentage of persons of any race, color, religion, sex, or national origin employed by any employer, referred or classified for employment by any employment agency or labor organization, admitted to membership or classified by any labor organization, or admitted to, or employed in, any apprenticeship or other training program, in comparison with the total number or percentage of persons of such race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in any community, State, section, or other area, or in the available work force in any community, State, section, or other area.

Which is to say, affirmative action or diversity programs.

29 C.F.R. § 1608.1–1608.1(c) says:

> Voluntary affirmative action to improve opportunities for minorities and women must be encouraged and protected in order to carry out the Congressional intent embodied in title VII.[4] Affirmative action under these principles means those actions appropriate to overcome the effects of past or present practices, policies, or other barriers to equal employment opportunity. Such voluntary affirmative action cannot be measured by the standard of whether it would have been required had there been litigation, for this standard would undermine the legislative purpose of first encouraging voluntary action without litigation.

34 C.F.R. § 106.3(b) says:

> a recipient may take affirmative action to overcome the effects of conditions which resulted in limited participation therein by persons of a particular sex.

The decision in United Steelworkers v. Weber states:

> Title VII's prohibition in §§ 703(a) and (d) against racial discrimination does not condemn all private, voluntary, race-conscious affirmative action plans. ... Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U. S. 405, 422 U. S. 418, cannot be interpreted as an absolute prohibition against all private, voluntary, race-conscious affirmative action efforts to hasten the elimination of such vestiges.

The decision in Johnson v. Transportation Agency similarly states that Santa Clara County Transportation Agency did not violate Title VII by promoting a less-qualified woman.

The decision in Cohen v. Brown University upheld the use of affirmative action to equalize opportunity.

The law _literally_ contemplates this. As you said, "you need to literally look it up sometime."

Held: Harvard’s and UNC’s admissions programs violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Pp. 6–40.

"(b) Proposed by Congress and ratified by the States in the wake of the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment provides that no State shall “deny to any person . . . the equal protection of the laws.” Proponents of the Equal Protection Clause described its “foundation[al] principle” as “not permit[ing] any distinctions of law based on race or color.” Any “law which operates upon one man,” they maintained, should “operate equally upon all.” Accordingly, as this Court’s early decisions interpreting the Equal Protection Clause explained, the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed “that the law in the States shall be the same for the black as for the white; that all persons, whether colored or white, shall stand equal before the laws of the States.” ...

"Respondents suggest that the end of race-based admissions programs will occur once meaningful representation and diversity are achieved on college campuses. Such measures of success amount to little more than comparing the racial breakdown of the incoming class and comparing it to some other metric, such as the racial makeup of the previous incoming class or the population in general, to see whether some proportional goal has been reached. The problem with this approach is well established: “[O]utright racial balancing” is “patently unconstitutional.”

To be sure, the line between “pure speech” that arguably entails discriminatory sentiments, see 303 Creative, 600 U.S. at 587, and the very act of discrimination itself may at times be hard to draw. And to be sure, Fearless characterizes its contest as reflecting its “commitment” to the “[b]lack women-owned” business community. The fact remains, though, that Fearless simply—and flatly— refuses to entertain applications from business owners who aren’t “black females.” Official Rules at 3. If that refusal were deemed sufficiently “expressive” to warrant protection under the Free Speech Clause, then so would be every act of race discrimination, ... "Moreover, and more specifically, each lost opportunity to enter Fearless’s contest works an irreparable injury because it prevents the Alliance’s members from competing at all—not just for the $20,000 cash prize but also for Fearless’s ongoing mentorship and the ensuing business opportunities that a contest victory might provide. "