Coca-Cola warned its woke policy would violate anti-discrimination law

On June 11, the American Civil Rights Project (ACRP) sent a warning letter to the Coca-Cola company, alleging that the beverage corporation's new diversity policy would require contracted law firms to violate anti-discrimination law.

The letter asks the recently-beleaguered company to either "publicly retract the discriminatory outside-counsel policies it announced in January" or, otherwise, "provide access to the corporate records related to the decision of Coca-Cola’s officers and directors to adopt and retain those illegal policies."

Further down in the letter, the memo talks about the mega soft drink company's new policy "of contracting, refusing to contract, and altering the terms of signed contracts on the basis of the race of Coke’s counterparties, the [directors] have exposed Coke and its shareholders to material risk of liability."

The letter goes on to cite existing anti-discrimination laws, which it alleges that the new hiring policy violates: "These conditional threats are textbook violations of Section 1981. By adopting Policies of contracting, refusing to contract, and altering the terms of signed contraction on the basis of the race of Coke’s counterparties, the Coke D&O have exposed Coke and its shareholders to material risk of liability."

The current "diversity" policy in place at Coca-Cola requires that the company "commit that at least 30% of each of billed associate and partner time will be from diverse attorneys, and of such amounts at least half will be from black attorneys."

The Coca Cola company has been steering itself in a "woke" direction, which has drawn widespread criticism from its shareholders and from the public in general.