Seattle lawmakers on Tuesday approved legislation to ban caste discrimination in a move that could impact tech workers and companies.
The first-in-the-nation law aims to address a social practice that is rooted in thousands of years of history in India and other countries.
Caste is “a system of rigid social stratification characterized by hereditary status, endogamy, and social barriers sanctioned by custom, law, or religion,” according to the legislation.
Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant, who sponsored the bill, said workers — including in the tech sector — face discrimination in their workplaces in Seattle and other cities around the country.
She called the new anti-discrimination law “profound and historic.”
“It’s a beacon to cities and states around the country and for working people elsewhere to build movements to also ban this horrific form of oppression,” Sawant said.
Several tech workers voiced support for the law during an emotional 75-minute public comment period at the City Council meeting Tuesday. A member of the Alphabet Workers Union, which supported the bill, said they witnessed caste-based slurs and said related incidents can’t be reported due to “lack of caste protection” or “non-action” from companies.
Another person said their last name and background was “constantly questioned” by a colleague at a tech startup.
Varisha Khan, a councilmember from Redmond, Wash. — home of Microsoft — also spoke during the public comment period.
“Over the years I’ve heard stories from the caste-oppressed community facing discrimination without legal recourse, and how many of them have had to hide their caste to ensure that they don’t get discriminated by dominant caste members who can act with impunity,” Khan said. “I urge you to make civil rights history and vote yes.”
A majority of the speakers were in favor of the bill, though some asked the council to vote against it, citing complexity of the caste system and anti-Hinduism.
Councilmember Sara Nelson was the lone vote against the legislation. She noted the potential of “yet another costly lawsuit possibly brought by a well-resourced employer in the tech sector.”
“I’m concerned that designating caste as a protected class in Seattle is likely a reckless, unnecessary, and harmful solution to a problem about which we have no data or research on its occurrence in Seattle,” she said on Tuesday.
Sawant said there were more than 4,000 emails sent to City Council in support of the ordinance.
Tech leaders previously told GeekWire that they hadn’t personally seen caste bias in the technology community in Seattle or in the U.S.
One alleged case of caste discrimination in the tech industry has turned into a notable lawsuit in California, where a former worker at Cisco Systems claims he was a victim of discrimination because of his low caste standing.
Bloomberg Law reported that the unnamed worker claimed supervisors at Cisco’s San Jose, Calif., headquarters excluded him from meetings and passed him up for promotions due to his status as part of the Dalit caste, considered the lowest rung of the hierarchical South Asian system.
The lawsuit is testing California’s anti-discrimination statute that includes protection for discrimination based on ancestry.
On the strength of that Cisco case, workers at Google parent Alphabet, under the Alphabet Workers Union label, previously called on the tech giant to apply its Indian caste-based anti-discrimination policy in the U.S, writing, “Alphabet can lead the industry and become the first technology company to add caste as a protected category globally.”
The Equity Lab, a nonprofit that takes on issues of inequity, found in a 2016 survey of South Asian Americans that one in four caste-oppressed people faced physical and verbal assault, one in three faced education discrimination, and two in three faced workplace discrimination.
In her 10 years on the City Council, Sawant has championed a number of workers’ rights issues and has taken on big tech, including the push for a “head tax” on Amazon and other big businesses. She announced last month that she won’t seek re-election when her term is up at the end of 2023.
