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Victory: Court Rules Corporate Gender Quota
Lawsuit May Go Forward
Good news! A California court authorized our taxpayer lawsuit to move
forward against a California law that mandates gender quotas for corporate
boards. The court held
that our clients have standing to sue under state law, and our attorneys
will now proceed to discovery, including depositions of various
officials.
This action comes in the case (Robin
Crest et al. v. Alex Padilla (No.19ST-CV-27561). We filed the
lawsuit
on August 6, 2019, on behalf of three California taxpayers to prevent the
State from implementing Senate Bill 826. The 2018 law requires publicly
held corporations headquartered in California to have at least one director
“who self-identifies her gender as a woman” on their boards by December
31, 2019. Up to three such persons are required by December 31, 2021,
depending on the size of the board.
Our lawsuit alleges that the mandate is an unconstitutional gender-based
quota. In our complaint we argue:
SB 826 is illegal under the California Constitution. The legislation’s
quota system for female representation on corporate boards employs express
gender classifications. As a result, SB 826 is immediately suspect and
presumptively invalid and triggers strict scrutiny review.
Even before the bill passed, a California Assembly floor analysis
identified a “significant risk of legal challenges” to SB 826. It
characterized the legislation as creating a “quota-like system” and
noted:
[T]his bill, if enacted into law, would likely be challenged on equal
protection grounds … The use of a quota-like system, as proposed by this
bill, to remedy past discrimination and differences in opportunity may be
difficult to defend.”
In signing SB 826 in September 2018, then-Governor Brown wrote that,
“serious legal concerns have been raised” to the legislation. “I
don’t minimize the potential flaws that indeed may prove fatal to its
ultimate implementation.” He signed the bill anyway, noting,
“Nevertheless, recent events in Washington, D.C. – and beyond – make
it crystal clear that many are not getting the message.”
Currently, 625 publicly traded corporations are headquartered in California
and are subject to the legislation’s provisions. In a March 2020 report
the secretary of state identified 282 corporations that reported compliance
with the law’s requirements.
We are pleased that the court saw through California’s flimsy claim that
taxpayers had no standing to sue to stop this brazenly unconstitutional
gender-quota law. Even Gov. Brown, in signing the law, worried that it is
unconstitutional. Our California taxpayer clients are stepping up to make
sure that California’s Constitution, which prohibits sex discrimination,
is upheld.
Judicial Watch and Daily Caller News Foundation Sue for Joe
Biden’s Senate Records at University of Delaware
We filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit on behalf of the Daily
Caller News Foundation against the University of Delaware for former Vice
President Biden’s Senate records, which are housed at the university’s
library (Daily
Caller News Foundation v. University of Delaware (No.
N20A-07-001)). We sued in the Superior Court of the State of Delaware.
Judicial Watch and the Daily Caller filed requests on April 30 for all of
Biden’s records and for records about the preservation and any proposed
release of the records, including communications with Mr. Biden or his
representatives. The university said it would not release the records until
two years after Biden has retired from public life.
Our April 30, 2020, FOIA request seeks:
- All records regarding the proposed release of the records pertaining
to former Vice President Joe Biden’s tenure as a senator that have been
housed at the University of Delaware Library since 2012. This request
includes all related records of communication between the University of
Delaware and any other records created pertaining to any meeting of the
Board of Trustees during which the proposed release of the records was
discussed.
- All records of communication between any representative of the
University of Delaware and former Vice President Biden or any other
individual acting on his behalf between January 1, 2018 and the
present.
On April 30, the Daily Caller News Foundation submitted its FOIA request to
the University seeking:
- All agreements concerning the storage of more than 1,850 boxes of
archival records and 415 gigabytes of electronic records from Joe Biden’s
Senate career from 1973 through 2009.
- Communications between the staff of the University of Delaware Library
and Joe Biden or his senatorial, vice-presidential or political campaign
staff, or for anyone representing any of those entities between 2010 [April
30,2020] about Joe Biden’s Senate records.
- Any logs or sign-in sheets recording any individuals who have visited
the special-collections department where records from Joe Biden’s Senate
career are stored between 2010 to the date of this request.
- All records from Joe Biden’s Senate career that have been submitted
to the University of Delaware Library.
On May 20, the University denied the Daily Caller News Foundation’s
request.
In response to both requests, the University claimed, without
corroboration, that public funds are not used to support the Joseph R.
Biden, Jr. Senatorial Papers.
Tara Reade, who has accused Biden of sexually assaulting her in 1993 when
she worked as a staff assistant to the then-senator, has
said that she believes a workplace discrimination and harassment
complaint she filed against Biden at the time may be in the records housed
at the University of Delaware. Biden also admitted to communicating with Vladimir
Putin and other foreign leaders when he was a United State Senator.
“The University of Delaware should do the right thing and turn over Joe
Biden’s public records as required by law,” Daily Caller News
Foundation Co-Founder and President Neil Patel said. “Partisan
gamesmanship by a public university is unseemly and unlawful. If they
don’t want to do the right thing, we will force them in court.”
He’s right. The University of Delaware should stop protecting Joe Biden
and provide the public access to his public records, as Delaware law
requires.
The New Judicial Watch Book: ‘A Republic Under Assault,’ is
Available for Pre-Order
Let’s hope we have another New York Times bestseller on our
hands here: “A Republic Under Assault, the Left’s Ongoing Attack on
American Freedom” is now available for pre-order (https://www.judicialwatchbook.com/).
My first two bestselling books, "The
Corruption Chronicles" and "Clean
House," exposed the hypocrisy and corruption of Obama’s two terms. In
this latest book I identify the four major forces posing a continued threat
to American democracy.
- Deep State Efforts to Destroy the Trump Presidency:
The documents that show senior officials in the Obama administration, with
the approval of Barack Obama, spied on the Trump presidential campaign AND
President Trump! The dirty secrets of Obamagate and the impeachment/coup
attack are exposed!
- Hillary Clinton’s Email Scandal: How Hillary
Clinton, her top aides, and senior officials at the Obama State Department
conspired to cover-up Hillary Clinton’s secret email system—and
shocking new docs that tie Obama White House to the cover-up!
- Voter Fraud: How Soros-funded groups attack states
that seek to protect clean elections by challenging voter ID laws, and how
the Left is cynically peddling COVID-19 crisis electoral “reforms,”
like mail-in voting, which could increase voter fraud and election
chaos.
- Illegal Immigration: How deadly and illegal
“sanctuary” policies are exploding across America, and how our
nation’s sovereignty has been under assault by radical open border
advocates.
Subversive Deep State collaborators with ties to the Clinton and Obama
machines not only launched countless—often illegal—operations to stop
and then remove Trump, but even more alarmingly, are working to transform
the United States into something truly unrecognizable to all who believe in
liberty and the rule of law.
Today one of their main targets is President Donald J. Trump.
Tomorrow it could be you and anyone who believes in the US Constitution,
believes the United States must have clearly defined and protected borders,
believes in the need for a strong military, believes in the value of hard
work and faith, and believes in the rule of law and American
exceptionalism.
“A Republic Under Assault” will be published by Threshold Editions on
October 20, 2020. Learn more here.
Until next week …
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