By Lauren Weber 

Civil-rights lawyer Cyrus Mehri has fought some of the most significant workplace race-discrimination lawsuits in U.S. history, winning a $176 million settlement with Texaco in 1996 and a $192.5 million settlement with Coca-Cola Co. in 2000. More important than the monetary relief for his clients, he says, are the structural adjustments he insists on in settlements: extensive changes to companies' internal human-resources processes, designed to fix the systems that allow racial barriers to persist.

In 2002, Mr. Mehri co-wrote a report showing that Black coaches in the National Football League achieved superior results to their white counterparts, yet were more likely to be fired and less likely to be hired. That work turned into the Rooney Rule, a policy the NFL adopted in 2002, which requires teams to interview one or more candidates of color for head coach positions. The rule is named after Dan Rooney, the late Pittsburgh Steelers owner and chairman of the NFL's diversity committee. Mr. Mehri says he was inspired by an anecdote about former Army Secretary Clifford Alexander, who was given an all-white list of colonels who were ready for promotion. After he instructed his subordinates to look again at the records of eligible Black colonels, Colin Powell was among the names put forward. "The rest is history," Mr. Mehri says.

In 2020, racial justice became a higher priority for corporate America after the killing of George Floyd at the hands of police and the protests that followed. Many executives engaged in public reflection and vowed to fight systemic racism, promises for which Mr. Mehri says they should be held accountable.

Mr. Mehri's parents immigrated to the U.S. from Iran, where his mother was an outspoken critic of the Shah. Mr. Mehri grew up in Connecticut and attended Cornell Law School. Through his law firm, Mehri & Skalet PLLC, and his consulting firm, Working Ideal, he shoots for sweeping changes to corporate practices over incremental steps.

The Wall Street Journal spoke to Mr. Mehri in December about the future of racial equity in the workplace.

This conversation would have looked different if we'd had it a year ago. Is the time ripe for companies to make long-term progress on equal opportunity?

We're in an incredible moment and we can do things that have lasting change that goes five, 10, 30 years down the line. There is a moral case for diversity and inclusion. And there's a business case: long-term value is tied to diversity and diversity is tied to innovation. But the last two years have told us there is a democracy case, too. Our democracy is not sustainable if we don't embrace equal opportunity and upward mobility. If we're going to thrive as a democracy, we need to give people the feeling that, with hard work and meritorious decision-making, they can rise to the top. That awareness now should be crystal clear.

How do we get there?

At the bottom of the list is litigation. At the top of the list is innovation. I'm looking for innovations that fit the American spirit, and that's about fair competition, giving people a fair shot and merit-based decisions. We need a new technology, a silicon chip for equal opportunity. We have the ideas and the science to make it happen. That's the good news.

What's an innovation that could have a strong impact?

Here's one: merge SEC disclosures -- annual reports, 10Ks -- with advancing equal opportunity. For example, require companies to disclose race and gender data for their top 200 highest-paid employees. It's a way to understand where the glass ceiling is. Do it by total compensation so it includes stock options. It'll tell you who's in the decision-making pool of the company. It can be phased in over a couple of years so that companies have time to improve. Companies will be like, "Before we release this information, we want to be sure we're best in class. We want our employees to see that, our consumers, our regulators, our competitors." The disclosure will motivate them, spurring on even more innovation. It will have a cascading effect. Companies that are impervious to what stakeholders care about may not be motivated, but everything comes back to leadership. Many are people of goodwill and will take this as a challenge.

How about another idea?

Social science shows that having multiple diverse candidates or women candidates has a monumental impact on outcomes. If you have one woman versus two women on a slate, when you go to two women, it's 79 times more likely that a woman will be selected [than if there was only one woman in the pool]. When you go from one to two people of color, the number goes up like 190 times. If there are multiple diverse candidates, they're multiple times more likely to be hired. Why is that? When you have isolated, coveted jobs, you need to do something to change the norms because the presumptions and stereotypes are so deeply rooted. It's not telling people who to hire, it's about picking the best person.

You said that litigation isn't the way to achieve these goals, but you've built your career on lawsuits that have forced big companies to change the way they do things. Why is that not a promising avenue to address these problems?

It's fair to say that in the last 10 years the door has almost been completely shut on people having access to the courts. You have forced arbitration: Just to apply for or keep a job, you give up your constitutional right to a jury trial. Then you have the legal standards escalating. The Walmart v. Dukes case [in which the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011 narrowed the terms under which a group can bring a class-action claim] makes it extremely difficult for workers to band together to vindicate their civil rights. In the Comcast case [in which the Supreme Court in 2020 raised the bar for proving racial discrimination], they just elevated the standard for intent. So the courthouse door is close to being completely shut. That's even more of a reason why we need leadership in other quarters.

Will we come to a point where regulation of some form -- whether in litigation, legislation or less formal rules -- isn't necessary? In other words, where racial equity in the workplace is simply the norm?

I don't think that day is going to happen in our lifetime. Sustained, continuous effort is required.

Interview has been condensed and edited.

Write to Lauren Weber at lauren.weber@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 09, 2021 10:11 ET (15:11 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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