New Delhi: California State University professors Sunil Kumar and Praveen Sinha have filed an appeal in a federal court challenging the dismissal of their complaint against the university. Their complaint alleged that the CSU’s amended non-discrimination policy, which singles out ‘caste’ as a protected category, unfairly targets students and employees of Indian origin and Hindu faith.
Praveen Sinha is a professor of accountancy at CSU-Long Beach and Kumar is a professor in the College of Engineering at San Diego State University (SDSU), which comes under the CSU system.
In 2022, the CSU had included caste in its non-discriminatory policy, which many faculty members had termed as a “misguided overreach”. More than 80 professors of Indian Hindu origin had submitted an open letter demanding that the Collective Bargaining Agreement — a legal contract between the students’ union and the university — be approved “only after removal of the discriminatory insertion of ‘caste’ as an additional category”.
Kumar and Sinha had, in October last year, filed a complaint in California federal court against CSU to prevent the university from enforcing the policy. However, on 21 November, the district court entered an order dismissing the plaintiffs’ due process claims for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.
Their appeal, filed last week, now seeks to reverse the court’s order.
According to a press statement released by the Hindu American Foundation, a US-based non-profit Hindu advocacy group, the appeal is based on three reasons.
First, the district court’s “improper” dismissal of the “plaintiffs’ due process claims for lack of standing” and the district court’s legal analysis on this issue being “contrary to well-established case law.” Second, because the court “ignored” facts and “misapplied the law to hold that [n]o reasonable reader would conclude that the policy defines Hinduism to include a caste system”. And third, because, as the plaintiffs allege, the policy interferes with their “participation in their religion and impermissibly defines religious doctrine.”
In a joint email response to ThePrint, Professors Kumar and Sinha said, “We believe the appellate court will understand and apply the correct standards and find CSU’s policy unconstitutional or return the case to the district court for further proceedings. Enforcing existing law is what’s necessary to prevent discrimination.”
HAF’s Executive Director Suhag Shukla, Esq., and Managing Director Samir Kalra, Esq., are serving as “of counsels” in the case. The HAF, in an email response, told ThePrint that the organisation sides with the appeal of Kumar and Sinha because it believes there can be possible repercussions of it on the Hindu American community.
“Our standing is that existing non-discrimination categories can and should be applied in cases of alleged caste discrimination, and that a specific category for caste is problematic under US legal principles,” said HAF.
In March 2023, Senator Aisha Wahab, a lawmaker from the Democratic Party, had authored and introduced the SB-403 bill — a legislation that sought to add caste as a protected category in the state’s anti-discrimination laws alongside gender, race, religion and disability. The bill was passed by the state’s senate in May with a 34-1 vote.
However, Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed the bill in November 2023. In a statement, Newsom called the bill “unnecessary”, explaining that California “already prohibits discrimination based on sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, and other characteristics, and state law specifies that these civil rights protections shall be liberally construed.”
“The record is clear: ‘caste’ was added to CSU’s non-discrimination policy for no other plausible reason than to intentionally target Hindus and define Hinduism in a constitutionally impermissible manner,” said Samir Kalra, HAF’s Managing Director. “This appeal is therefore necessary to protect the basic constitutional rights of not only professors Sunil Kumar and Praveen Sinha, but all Hindu faculty, staff, and students at CSU campuses throughout California.
Also read: US university’s trustees vote to include caste in its anti-discrimination policy