In the following guest post, Virginia Milstead, a partner at the Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP law firm, reviews and considers the implications of the May 13, 2022 verdict in Crest v. Padilla, in which the Los Angeles County Superior Court held that California’s statute requiring women on corporate boards violates the state constitution’s equal protection clause. A version of this article previously was published as a Skadden client alert; this version is updated to reflect the fact that the California secretary of state has indicated that she will appeal the court’s verdict. I would like to than the author for allowing me to publish her article as a guest post on this site. I welcome guest post submissions from responsible authors on topics of interest to this blog’s readers. Please contact me directly if you would like to submit a guest post. Here is the author’s article.
Continue Reading Guest Post: California Trial Court Strikes Down Women on Boards Law
Over recent months, there has been a series of regulatory, legislative, and litigation measures and actions implemented to try to address perceived concerns about diversity in the corporate boardroom. Prominent among these measures was AB 979, the 
As readers of this blog know, the various board diversity lawsuits that the plaintiffs’ lawyers filed in late 2020 and early 2021 have uniformly fared poorly in the courts. In the latest dismissal motion ruling in one of these suits, the court in the board diversity suit filed against the directors of Cisco Systems has granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss, albeit without prejudice. The court’s ruling in the Cisco Systems board diversity suit is noteworthy because the court addressed the merits of the plaintiff’s Section 14(a) claims. A copy of the court’s March 1, 2022 dismissal order can be found 
Last summer, when California 
In 2018, California passed a law mandating gender diversity on the boards of directors of companies headquartered in California. The legislation known as 
One of the focal points in the scrutiny that has followed in the wake of the current social justice movement has been the question of diversity at America’s companies, including the lack of diversity on corporate boards. Among other things, a number of boards of public companies lacking Black directors have been sued in a series of shareholders derivative lawsuits alleging that the board members violated their fiduciary duties by failing to live up to state diversity objectives, as discussed most recently. Now, in the latest example of this type of litigation, a plaintiff shareholder has filed a derivative lawsuit against the board of Monster Beverage Corporation, alleging that the directors breached their fiduciary duties and deceived investors by claiming to have diversity and inclusion programs while have no Black directors on the board. A copy of the complaint can be found