Seattle Considers Banning Caste-based Discrimination

AP reports:

[Seattle City Council member Kshama] Sawant has proposed an ordinance to add caste to Seattle's anti-discrimination laws. If her fellow council members approve it Tuesday, Seattle will become the first city in the United States to specifically outlaw caste discrimination….

The national debate in the United States around caste has been centered in the South Asian community, causing deep divisions within the diaspora. Dalit activist-led organizations such as Oakland, California-based Equality Labs, say caste discrimination is prevalent in diaspora communities, surfacing in the form of social alienation and discrimination in housing, education and the tech sector where South Asians hold key roles….

Suhag Shukla, executive director of the Hindu American Foundation, called Seattle's proposed ordinance unconstitutional because "it singles out and targets an ethnic minority and seeks to institutionalize implicit bias toward a community."

"It sends that message that we are an inherently bigoted community that must be monitored," Shukla said.

Caste is already covered under the current set of anti-discrimination laws, which provide protections for race, ethnicity and religion, she said.

Two comments:
(1) It's not at all clear to me that current antisdiscrimination laws cover caste discrimination. And it's almost certainly not unconstitutional for a city to ban discrimination based on caste simply because Indian Americans are disproportionately likely to be both the perpertrators and victims of such discrimination.
(2) This is yet one more example of America's absurd racial classification system. India is an extremely internally diverse of 1.5 billion people, with many different ethnic groups, languages, and religions, and of course a longstanding caste system. Yet when Indians immigrate to the US, they become generic "Asian Americans" by government fiat, and when university consider their "diversity" goals, any Indian American, regardless of appearance, religion, caste, language and so on, is not only considered indistinguishable from any other Indian American, but also from a Chinese, Filipino, or Vietnamese American.

Comments

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Let the country which is without invidious discrimination caste the first stone.

[Ben_]

Seattle was able to solve all their other problems so they have time to focus law enforcement resources on this one.

[Dr. Ed 2]

[cue theme from COPS...]

I was going to do "caste police" as a parody, but won't as it's probably racist. Or something.

[Ben_]

Also it follows the trend of government not even trying to serve the public. Keeping the streets safe and clean for Seattle residents is hard work. Communicating a woke position on a fringe issue that may or may not affect a very tiny number of people in Seattle is no effort at all.

[Dr. Ed 2]

How does one know what caste an American of Indian ancestry belongs to?

[John F. Carr]

If you are in Seattle you could put a caste question on applications for diversity or tracking purposes.

One Indian I know volunteered his caste during a discussion of quota or antidiscrimination laws in India. Other than that I never thought to ask or even care. To me the system is like the Star Trek episode with the black-and-white and white-and-black aliens.

[John Cuyle]

This is the US, though, and we don’t have castes here. So what you get is a job application where a guy from Kentucky, a guy from California, and a guy from Ohio all apply and put “WTF is a caste?” on that line. One of them is of Indian descent, but since he’s not from India, he doesn’t know what castes are either. In order for banning discrimination on castes to make sense, we’d first have to import the idea of castes (which nobody here wants) and then start discriminating on them (also nobody wants). Except possibly Sawant. She might want to do that, just so she can ban them. I don’t think she’s ever seen a bad idea she didn’t want to implement.

[Jmaie]

This is an issue in Seattle due to the number of H1B visa holders working for BigTech. I've seen quotes of almost 10,000 visas per year from all source countries and a large majority come from India. Over 20+ years that adds up.

Sometimes a person's caste can be told by their names. Some Indian hiring managers have been accused of favoring certain segments of the population...

[John Cuyle]

Not an issue in Seattle. No tech company is interested in the potential claim of discrimination on the basis of national origin that would result from discriminating against people of Indian descent (since this appears to be an India thing, the only people discriminated against would be Indian, which is already illegal.) Any hiring manager engaged in this sort of already-illegal third-world backwardness would be fired.

[EscherEnigma]

Sameway you identify people of Irish or Polish ancestry: names, stereotypical features, cultural self-identity, and so-on.

That said, like all discrimination it is not actually important if the person doing the discrimination is correct, just that they think they are. For example, I, lacking any Irish blood (that I know of) could be subjected to anti-Irish discriminaiton if someone thinks I’m Irish.

And that said, this is very much an intra-community problem. Indians discriminating against other Indians on the basis of religion/culture/etc that most non-Indians won’t recognize or care about.

[Sarcastr0]

Read this as castle-based discrimination and was really intrigued for a moment.

[Bored Lawyer]

What do you have against people who live in castles?

[MatthewSlyfield]

It could be read as discrimination against people with broken bones. 🙂

[John F. Carr]

"in the form of social alienation"

Is Seattle going to ban social alienation?

[Krayt]

Not on your life. Social alienation is their greatest tool of cancellation.

Which is to say, planning to make a stink so your company fires you lest a twitter 3-day event occur.

[Ben_]

It’s already banned for the special people. Don’t ever let yourself be accused of a social slight against the people who matter.

For regular people you’ll be encouraged to be as nasty as you want. Ostracism or worse treatment of regular people may be required of you. See the way JK Rowling is treated for an example.

[apedad]

Prof. Bernstein,

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB), has requested comments on the initial proposals from the Federal Interagency Technical Working Group on Race and Ethnicity Standards in order to help OMB determine how to revise Statistical Policy Directive No. 15: Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity (SPD 15), to improve the quality and usefulness of Federal race and ethnicity data.

Looks like the comment period runs to the first week in April.

Hopefully you'll provide input - and share what you've provided.

https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2023-01635.pdf

[Jerry B.]

So this will end discrimination against Deplorables, MAGAs, Rednecks, Flyovers, Trumpfsters, and other socially alienated groups?

[apedad]

I thought they WANTED to be socially alienated.

Even to the point of seceding: https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3866590-marjorie-taylor-greene-calls-again-for-a-national-divorce/

[Krayt]

Seceding red states does work in favor of our domestic Putin lickspittles, to weaken the US so Putin can win.

[damikesc]

I thought Joe McCarthy died decades ago.

Proven wrong here it seems.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Why not apply the same standard to the Democrats? They say stupid things on Twatter as well -- and elsewhere.

[FivebySixThree]

Best of luck, they will just ignore the law. a people tend to have a large resistance to forcing norms alien to their lives

[SRG]

The irony is that according to strict Hindu principles, all the Hindus in the US have lost their caste rankings, so there shouldn’t even be such a thing as caste discrimination.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kala_pani_(taboo)

[Krayt]

Memeplexes adapt to maintain critical mass.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Speaking as a "mleccha", if this is true, then there is a greater need to prohibit discrimination against "mlecchas" than on the basis of caste.

"The mleccha people were spawned by immoral reprobates and blasphemously held religious belief in nāstika, albeit in different forms. They are understood to have rejected the Vedas and have ceased to worship Bhagavan, the divine Vedic God, in favor of concocted false religions and irreligions with contemptible manners of reverence. Their societies are immoral and built on deceit, subjugation, and corruption. Therefore, it was thought that true Hindus should not come under their influence or embrace their beliefs, as they will be just as deserving of contempt as a mleccha.

[ReaderY]

Professor Bernstein,

Could Seattle constitutionally ban the various Jewish restrictions on priests (cohanim)? They are milder but do sometimes effect employment. For example, the restriction on contact with the dead means one couldn’t work in a funeral home or cemetary, as a pathologist, etc. There might be situations where for example a religiously-owned Jewish funeral home might refuse to hire one. Could Seattle ban this?

The reasons Jewish caste restrictions strike me as less clear are that the restrictions are much more obscure than for Hindus (more limited ceremonial than pervading all of life), and also that the settings where they are most likely to occur are more arguably religious in character. But Seattle might argue that (for example) funerals are simply a business and any religion involved is incidental. And it is after all a caste system.

[ReaderY]

My next question is this. Suppose a Jewish Kohen asks for a religious exemption (say he wants to go to medical school without doing autopsies). Can Seattle ban the medical school from giving the exemption on grounds treating people of different castes differently constitutes caste discrimination, and hence violates public morality?

[Bored Lawyer]

I don't think medical schools give such an exemption, because that leads to an inferior medical education.

I had a roommate once, who was a Cohen, and went to dental school. His program required dissection of a human head. He paid someone to do it for him while he watched. Which the school was okay with.

I also don't think that an accommodation is discrimination. The person is asking for it, and if granted, then the school or employer is actually giving them a benefit. So I don't see how that's discrimination.

[Dr. Ed 2]

This is ghoulish and would be considered criminal in any other context.

Are we still doing this in the 21st Century?

WHY???

(Unless one intends to be a surgeon, what is the justification?!?

[ReaderY]

Since your roommate was allowed to go to dental school without doing the otherwise required autopsies, it sounds like these kinds of exemptions are in fact being given.

[John F. Carr]

Or, can New York City ban shunning of women who remarry without a get?

[Bored Lawyer]

That's not a caste but a religious status.

And the answer to that question is NO. See Klagsbrun v. Va'ad Harabonim of Greater Monsey, 53 F. Supp. 2d 732 (D.N.J. 1999), aff'd sub nom. Klagsbrun v. Vaad Harabonm of Greater Monsey, 263 F.3d 158 (3d Cir. 2001)
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp2/53/732/2290265/

[Dr. Ed 2]

I read that case differently — that the association of rabbis had the right to say that he wasn’t in compliance with their religious law, and that the court rejected his libel suit (which, IMHO, they could have won on the merits, notwithstanding the religious protections).

That’s a very different thing from justifying “shunning” and I can see a lot of “shunning” behavior being in violation of *other* civil rights laws, e.g. equal housing, employment, public accommodations, etc.

In other words, if the Rabbi said “fire him” and someone did, would he have a suit against both the employer and Rabbi? If the Rabbi said to fire me because I am a Protestant, wouldn’t I?

[John F. Carr]

I agree that case doesn't resolve the question. The courts can't decide whether a man is a bigamist under Jewish law (as in Klagsbrun) or whether a rainbow striped wedding cake offends Christian values. The courts can judge some secular consequences of a fatwa.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Fatwa is a better example — and wasn’t there some clan leader who had a radio show berating some Jewish leader for something, and convicted when one of his wingbat followers put a rattlesnake in his mailbox?

Memory is that it was a fatality, and that the Klan leader was convicted of murder on the basis of what he had said on the radio.

[EscherEnigma]

Assuming I've understood the question correctly... yes.

Let's say you have a pork processing plant. There are literally no factory-floor jobs that don't involve handling pork products.

If someone applies for an open factory-floor job, that employer is supposed to ignore the religion of that applicant and consider them the same as any other applicant, so yes, if a Jewish or Muslim person applies, the employer is supposed to ignore that their religion has prohibitions on that. That said, if the applicant refuses to touch pork products (for any reason, religious or not) the employer is perfectly within their rights to decline to hire them.

The onus is put on the employer to ignore the religion of the applicants. And the onus is put on the applicants to not seek a job that they will then refuse to do. If the applicant decides to handle pork products despite it being against their religion, that's not the employer's business.

[ReaderY]

Having raised the fact that Judaism has similar issues, just fewer and more obscure, my next question is, could Hindus claim a religious exemption? After all what they are doing is, just like with Jews, religious rather than social in character, at least from their point of view. If Jews can get religious exemptions for the few areas where it affects their lives, why can’t Hindus?

[ReaderY]

If the Jew can get an exemption (see above), why can’t the Hindu?

I understand the high-caste Jew seeking an exemption from e.g. the medical school curriculum may be more sympathetic than the Hindu-owned business seeking not to hire the low-caste Hindu. And the Jewish funeral home may seem more directly religious in character than a more general business.

But is there analytical difference? Are their legal claims different?

[Krayt]

Is not touching the yicky untouchables a religious thing?

[EscherEnigma]

Sorta.

You'll find in many religions some amount of "and don't touch this icky thing, or if you do, you have to do this other thing to ritually cleanse yourself".

Pork, blood, offal, and so-on are common targets.

A common anthropological theory is that our forebears might not have known about germ theory, but they were able to identify correlation, and what practices nullified (or at least mitigated) the danger. These things to avoid and what to do if you couldn't wound up in religion, because that was the main way knowledge was transferred from generation to generation.

[Bored Lawyer]

I think it depends on the context. In a religious context, it's much harder for the government to require non-discrimination, than in a secular one.
If a lower-caste Hindu applies for a job as a janitor, or computer programmer, with a Hindu-owned firm, then it seems to me Seattle would be Constitutionally permitted to bar discrmination.
If he applied for a job in a temple as a priest, the analysis is different.

[Dr. Ed 2]

EXACTLY -- the Ministerial Exception.
See Starkey v. Roncalli High School https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca7/21-2524/21-2524-2022-07-28.html

There's another case involving a teacher with the dispute being if she was a minister or employee.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I expect to learn that the professor's strident objection to classifications maintains a vivid exception for religious classifications (and expansive special privilege for certain flavors).

[Dr. Ed 2]

The biggest mistake our Founding Fathers did was to not explicitly state that this a Christian Nation, much as Saudi Arabia is a Moslem Nation.

It was just presumed — and a lot of people honestly thought that the Bill of Rights wasn’t necessary because all of that was also presumed…

[EscherEnigma]

It wasn't presumed, it was explicitly rejected.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Choose reason. Every time.

Choose reason. Every time. Especially over sacred ignorance and dogmatic intolerance. Most especially if you are older than 12 or so. By then childhood indoctrination fades as an excuse for ignorance, backwardness, gullibility, superstition, and bigotry. By adulthood -- this includes ostensible adulthood, even in the most desolate backwater one might find -- it is no excuse.

Choose reason. Every time. And education, modernity, science, inclusiveness, freedom, and progress. Avoid superstition, ignorance, backwardness, dogma, authoritarianism, intolerance, and pining for good old days that never existed. Not 75 years ago. Not 175 years ago. Not ever, except in fairy tales suitable solely for small children and especially credulous adolescents.

Choose reason. Every time. Be an adult.

Or, at least, please try.

Thank you.

[EscherEnigma]

This is yet one more example of America's absurd racial classification system.

Nah.

This intra-caste discrimiantion is 100% imported and has nothing to do with the US Government. I know that government racial classificaiton is your thing, Bernstein, but you're well into "when all you have is a hammer" territory here.