Legislating Against Caste Discrimination: What the U.S. Can Learn from India and the U.K.

Jonathan Greenberg*

Over the past few decades, Indian-Americans have become one of the fastest-growing communities in the United States. Today, more than four million U.S. citizens have Indian heritage, and hundreds of thousands of Indian citizens work for U.S. employers on H-1B and L-1 Visas. As the Indian population in the United States has grown, so has the need to address caste discrimination under U.S. law. Several recent lawsuits have shed light on the prevalence of caste discrimination within American workplaces. For the first time, American courts will rule on whether caste discrimination violates existing federal or state employment discrimination statutes.

The purpose of this Note is to urge American lawmakers to pass legislation explicitly banning caste- based employment discrimination. Although U.S. courts should find that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and state antidiscrimination statutes prohibit caste discrimination, the experiences of other countries underscore the risks associated with leaving this determination to courts. Analysis of the U.K. and India’s legal responses to caste-based employment discrimination reveals that statutory bans on caste discrimination can be effective and that legislative inaction can lead to weak court-made regimes that deny caste discrimination victims adequate legal protection. Thus, American lawmakers should either amend Title VII and state antidiscrimination statutes to add caste as a new protected characteristic or pass laws stating that caste is covered by one or more of those statutes’ already existing protected characteristics.

*J.D., Columbia Law School, 2024. I want to thank my mother, Valerie Greenberg, and my siblings, Matt and Zoe Greenberg, for their constant love and support. I also want to thank Professor Madhav Khosla for his contributions to this note as well as the editorial staff of the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law for their outstanding work. Finally, I want to thank my past Hindi and Urdu professors and all the others who have taught me about India. In memory of my father and role model, Michael Greenberg.