WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, America First Legal’s (AFL) Center for Legal Equality filed a federal civil rights complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against Williams-Sonoma, Inc. for the company’s allegedly unlawful employment practices. AFL also sent a letter to Williams-Sonoma’s Board of Directors demanding that the company’s management stop its illegal employment and contracting practices and that it comply with federal securities laws mandating full disclosure of the legal, market, and reputational risks to the company and its shareholders created by “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies and practices.
Williams-Sonoma, a kitchenware and home furnishings retailer with brands including Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids, Pottery Barn Teen, West Elm, Williams Sonoma Home, Rejuvenation, Mark and Graham, and GreenRow, proudly represents to the public and its shareholders and investors that race, sex, and national origin are motivating factors in its hiring, employment, and contracting practices.
As outlined in Williams-Sonoma’s 2024 Annual Report, their Equity Action Plan and Equity Action Committee led to “approximately 68.1% of our total workforce identified as female and approximately 41.1% identified as an ethnic minority group.”
The company boasts higher management, comprising “56.6% of Vice Presidents and above identified as female.”
Williams-Sonoma’s Equity Action Committee also appears to reward executives for making race, color, sex, or national origin a motivating factor in hiring and other employee practices.
The Equity Action Plan tracked and set goals for the diversity of the company, board members, and board nominees. It then designed the “Associate Equity Network Groups” that benefit some workers and disfavor others, specifically white, male, and religious Americans.
Racial, ethnic, sex, and national origin “balancing” in hiring, training, and promotion is prohibited under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Finally, Williams-Sonoma’s 10K report to the federal SEC and investors highlights the company’s “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies.
However, the company has wrongfully failed to acknowledge that these policies are both legally suspect and highly controversial, and, as companies such as Disney, InBev, and Target have discovered, create material market and reputational risk.
AFL will keep fighting to protect the legal equality of all Americans and to hold woke corporations accountable for their illegal and divisive DEI policies.
Statement from Reed D. Rubinstein, America First Legal Senior Vice President:
“Woke corporations’ toxic, divisive, and unlawful DEI policies are a clear and present danger to the Constitution’s guarantee of legal equality. Incantations of ‘inclusion and belonging’ do not relieve corporate boards from their fiduciary obligation to comply with anti-discrimination laws, or to disclose the risks created when leftist managers hijack corporate and shareholder resources to serve their idiosyncratic and frankly un-American political and social views. As the great Justice Robert Jackson wrote in the case of United States v. Morton Salt, corporations ‘are endowed with public attributes. They have a collective impact upon society, from which they derive the privilege of acting as artificial entities.’ This derived privilege does not cover the abuse of our citizens’ rights; AFL will continue working tirelessly to hold the woke corporate class accountable,” said Reed D. Rubinstein.
Read the EEOC complaint here and the board letter here.
Follow us on social media for the latest updates on America First Legal’s fight to protect your constitutional rights!
X, Facebook, Instagram, Truth Social, Youtube
For press inquiries, please contact [email protected].
Photo credit: adobe stock images / Futuristictech
