In September 2022, the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) filed a lawsuit against the California Civil Rights Department (CRD) in a US federal court. Ongoing for over two years, the case is scheduled for its next and possibly final hearing on December 3. Unlike the Cisco case, this lawsuit has received limited media coverage in India and the US. This case not only connects to the Cisco lawsuit but also challenges the CRD’s legal authority to pursue caste discrimination cases.
The Cisco case
In June 2020, the CRD filed a lawsuit against Cisco Systems, alleging caste discrimination faced by a Dalit employee and later moved the superior court of California, Santa Clara.
Since this was a first-of-its-kind case in the US, where courts are unfamiliar with caste-based discrimination and lack precedents, the CRD clarified about caste in its filing, “As a strict Hindu social and religious hierarchy, India’s caste system defines a person’s status based on… the caste into which they are born – and will remain until death. At the bottom of the Indian hierarchy is the Dalit… who were traditionally subject to ‘untouchability’ practices which segregated them by social custom and legal mandate.”
This single reference to Hinduism in the complaint serves as a contextual explanation rather than an exhaustive analysis of caste and its origins.
In January 2021, the HAF filed a motion to intervene in the Cisco case on three main grounds.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.
