Coca Cola scraps policy requiring law firms to have 30 per cent ‘diverse’ staff
The Coca Cola Company has scrapped a policy requiring any outside law firms it works with to have 30 per cent “diverse” staff.
Coca Cola’s decision to scrap its diversity policy comes after the firm faced pressure from a group of shareholders threatening legal action against the drinks maker over its ethnic diversity policy, according to Bloomberg Law.
The threats of litigation came after Coca Cola general counsel Bradley Gayton said last year the firm would only take on law firms that have 30 per cent diverse staff.
The policy said at least 30 per cent of all hours billed should be for work carried out by “diverse” lawyers, and that 15 per cent of billed hours should be for work carried out by black lawyers.
In order to comply with Coca Cola’s policy, law firms were required to submit quarterly reports outlining the race, gender, sex, ethnicities, and disability statuses of all lawyers working on its accounts.
At the time, the American Civil Rights Project (ACRP) slammed Coca Cola for its “woke” diversity policy as it claimed that by adopting the policy the firm would be breaching anti-discrimination laws.
ACRP executive director Dan Morenoff said: “It’s amazing that neither the General Counsel of a large corporation like Coke, nor the large, prominent law firms the policy involved, seem to have considered its direct conflict with American civil rights laws.”
“It’s even more amazing that so many other sophisticated, American corporations have similarly disregarded obvious legal problems to adopt comparably ‘woke’ policies.”
Coca Cola’s decision to step back from the policy comes amid mounting scrutiny over diversity in the legal sector.