Caste Discrimination Exists in America. California Can Ban It

Most Americans have at best a vague idea of what the word “caste” means. Isabel Wilkerson, in “Caste: The Origins of our Discontents,” defines it as “the granting or withholding of respect, status, honor, attention, privileges, resources, benefit of the doubt, and human kindness to someone on the basis of their perceived rank or standing in [a social] hierarchy.”

Caste systems—that is, systems of social stratification characterized by notions such as heritability, immutability, endogamy (the prohibition of marriage and sex between castes), purity and pollution, occupational hierarchy, and inherent superiority and inferiority—exist not only in India and elsewhere in South Asia, but also in many other parts of the world.

As Wilkerson has explained, America has its own home-grown caste system. Ours is based on race. While racial discrimination still exists in the US, there are federal and state civil rights laws that address it, in part by providing legal remedies for its victims.

But when immigrants come to the US, they sometimes bring different kinds of caste systems with them from their countries of origin. It’s not always clear that American laws are sufficient to address some of the resulting problems.

Take, for instance, the case of Civil Rights Department v. Cisco Systems, Inc., originally filed in 2020 and still pending in a California state court. A Cisco engineer who had emigrated from India to the US as an adult filed a complaint with the Civil Rights Department saying he had been subjected to unlawful discrimination, harassment, and retaliation on the job because he was a Dalit. A Dalit is a member of the group at the bottom of (some would say below) the Indian caste system, formerly known by the dehumanizing term “untouchables.”

After investigating his complaint and finding cause to believe it was true, the CRD filed a suit alleging, among other things, that:

• Cisco has employed a predominantly South Asian Indian workforce for decades
• More than 90% of Indian immigrants to the US are upper-caste and the same is true within Cisco’s workforce
• The complainant worked in a team composed entirely of employees who grew up in India and immigrated to the US as adults
• Other than the complainant, his entire team was composed of upper-caste Indian immigrants who “imported the discriminatory system’s practices” into their team and into Cisco’s workplace
• And the discriminatory acts violated California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act.

Cisco moved to strike from the CRD’s complaint all allegations of discrimination based on caste, pointing out that the word “caste” does not appear anywhere in the act. The CRD responded that caste is encompassed in a number of the categories expressly listed in the statute, including race, color, national origin, religion, and ancestry.

While the Cisco case has gone up to and back down from an appellate court on other issues, no court has yet issued a decision on the fundamental question of whether the Fair Employment and Housing Act prohibits discrimination based on caste. The case is now in mediation which, if it results in a settlement, will leave this question unanswered.

The California legislature is considering a bill that would answer this question. SB-403 would amend the Fair Employment and Housing Act and other California civil rights statutes to expressly add caste to the protected categories in those laws.

By stating that the proposed amendments clarify existing law, the bill codifies that the state’s existing civil rights laws should be interpreted as prohibiting caste discrimination. The specific addition of caste would remove any remaining doubts.

The bill has passed the Senate on an overwhelming bipartisan vote and is awaiting action in the Assembly. If enacted, it will assure that California law provides legal protection to victims of discrimination based on caste.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law and Bloomberg Tax, or its owners.

Author Information

Patrick Patterson is a civil rights lawyer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is the former senior counsel to the chair of the US Equal Opportunity Commission, and former co-director of the Los Angeles office of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

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