US civil rights groups urge action on caste discrimination

Advocates for the Dalit population, the lowest caste in the hierarchical South Asian social system, say the mistreatment is more prevalent in workplaces with large populations of South Asian employees, such as in the technology sector.

Civil rights advocates are calling on a U.S. agency to recognize that caste discrimination is illegal under existing federal law, an issue growing more prominent as tech companies are hit with litigation by South Asian workers alleging bias based on social status. A dozen groups, including the International Commission on Dalit Rights, pressed the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to acknowledge that the practice of discriminating against historically oppressed South Asian groups is “an urgent contemporary U.S. civil rights and social justice issue,” according to a memo sent to the agency on Monday and obtained by Bloomberg Law. Caste prejudices parallel race bias in the U.S. because both “are social constructs designed to uphold systems of domination, exclusion, injustice, inequality, and discrimination,” the memo says.