Major League Baseball recently announced a “Diversity Fellowship Program” that is explicitly limited to “person[s] of color” and women.
What can I say? This is of course worse than the NFL’s Rooney Rule, which is also illegal, but which at least does not bar people on the basis of race from applying for and obtaining a position. This does.
There is no legal justification for this; Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act bans discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, and sex in private employment. Bizarrely, MLB’s announcement includes at end this boilerplate: “Individuals seeking employment at MLB . . . are considered without regards to race, color, . . . national origin, . . . sex . . . ”