Corporations listed on NASDAQ – and their shareholders -- face an apparent conflict between their exchange's approved rules and the state and federal laws governing their actions. What are shareholders and nominating committees to do to thread this needle?
On behalf of shareholders, the American Civil Rights Project, a national civil rights organization, is investigating allegations that the officers and directors of Lowe’s Companies, Inc. (NYSE: LOW) have breached their fiduciary duties.
The American Civil Rights Project has been named a nominee [...]
When the Voting Rights Act came up for renewal of its pre-clearance mechanism for the second time in 1975, Congress didn't just update its coverage formula and leave the statute in place. It amended the core provisions of the VRA, in relevant part, by adding provisions protecting "language minorities," including "persons who are ... of Spanish heritage." What did that mean in 1975? That question yields a clear answer upon consideration of the historical context, the text itself (supported by contemporaneous usage), Congress's enacted legislative findings, and the relevant legislative history -- those whose native language is Spanish, a disadvantaged group that is not identical with all Hispanics. But the courts have never applied this clear answer. The population Congress sought to protect through the 1975 amendments still largely suffers from the same problems Congress enacted the 1975 amendments to address. Instead, a misreading of the language of the amendments has yielded irrelevant relief to other groups for generations. This piece originally ran in The Federalist Society Review, Vol. 22.
In its current form, the "Making It ... with Lowe's" promotion discriminates based on race, ethnicity, sex, and gender, in violation of both state and Federal law. This threatens the company with potentially serious liability to America's small businesses and the company's officers and directors with potentially serious liability to their shareholders.
Today, the ACR Project submitted a comment in response to the Department of Education’s Request for Information in support of an anticipated change in the Department's guidance on the "nondiscriminatory administration of school discipline." The Department's version of the relevant history was tellingly incomplete, omitting facts important to a proper assessment of both the relevant social science and the state of the law. As the omissions are material, we briefly detail what OCR declined to include in the telling of this story, before turning to the legal infirmities of the guidance the Department seems driven to issue.
Fashions and fads tend to lead people wrong. You probably have a list of unfortunate ones in mind right now. Mullets? Bell-bottoms? Banded-collar shirts? Boy bands? The one at the top of my own list is equally offensive, but more freighted: the corporate "diversity and inclusion" policies sweeping the world's boardrooms in violation of both longstanding federal law and the American moral consensus. Newsweek originally published this piece in its Opinion section.
Today, on behalf of a set of concerned Coca-Cola Company shareholders, the ACR Project and its co-counsel Offit|Kurman demanded that the company either publicly retract the discriminatory outside-counsel policies it announced in January or provide access to the corporate records related to the decision of Coca-Cola's officers and directors to adopt and retain those illegal policies.
Yesterday, the American Civil Rights Project submitted a comment on the Department of Education's proposal of new priorities for federal education funding. We applauded the Department, where it would prioritize teaching students to analyze information dispassionately and apply objective, consistent standards to determine the reliability of sources. We could not do the same, where the Department's failure to apply objective, consistent standards to sources appears to have led it to rely on those using inaccurate information to manipulate their audiences.
The American Civil Rights Project, a national civil rights organization, is investigating on behalf of shareholders the officers and directors of Coca Cola Company (NYSE: KO) for breaches of fiduciary duties.
The American Civil Rights Project, a public-interest law firm, seeks to assure that American law equally protects all Americans. The American Civil Rights Project is a tax-exempt, Texas non-profit under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.