An explicitly racially discriminatory recruiting firm is, as far as I can tell, a legal novelty. For example, I am of Hmong origin, which means my submitted resume would be ignored purely based on my race according to the stated "acceptable ethnic groups" on the website.
It may have some sort of precedent/protection in US affirmative action doctrine, but I'm not so sure a lawsuit would be immediately dismissed. Anybody with more US anti-discrimination law knowledge feel free to add in.
I'm trying to answer your question. Choosing who to list on a jobs website is not a hiring decision. The candidate does not work for Jopwell. Jopwell cannot fire them nor pay them anything. Hiring law does not apply to a recruiter, except for their own hiring decisions for their staff.
Thus, bringing up hiring law, which applies to employers, as an objection to this sourcing service is irrelevant.
However they are still doing business with candidates and it is well established that e.g. a restaurant cannot refuse customers based on race. Uber could not refuse drivers based on race, even if drivers are (theoretically) independent contractors and not employees.
This is outside my knowledge of law but my spidey sense is that they are not clearly on solid legal footing.
Fair enough, so your question is one of equal accommodation and not hiring. What this boils down to is how they implement their signup and sourcing process, which is something you're absolutely right that they'll need to do properly.
P.S. I grew up in central CA and had a lot of Hmong, Mien, and Lao friends in school.
There is a website that still exists called ChristianMingle.com. I just checked their signup process and for the question "how often do you go to church?" you have to choose between "on special occasions" to "every week". You also have to choose one of what they consider to be Christian sub-groups. You have to choose a race.
You cannot answer "never" or "atheist". You have to choose one of the options or they will not complete the registration process. They refuse to serve your dating needs.
This site and hundreds like it are totally legal in the US.
> This site and hundreds like it are totally legal in the US.
Maybe only because they haven't been sued yet? E-Harmony got sued in a class action lawsuit because they didn't support same-sex matching[1]. They ended up settling out of court and establishing a site that does same-sex matching, because it wasn't clear to them that they would win the lawsuit.
This is a more substantive question but there's a lot of evidence it's not a problem. According to your article, eHarmony was sued in 2008, created the "separate but equal" site, and then merged them in 2012 after more complaints.
However, 3 years later, they still have separate portals for people interested in dating specific people:
Those portals are nominally for finding someone else of that race/religion - they don't prevent you from signing up if you're not a member of the group (I checked). That is the part that seems like it might not fly under California law - Jopwell is a business; so I don't see how they can legally deny accommodations based on race. I don't think the issue is with a company using Jopwell to find candidates, but rather with Jopwell telling white people that they are denied service due to race.
If you think that is OK, I don't see how you could be against a recruiting company that always rejected nonwhite candidates for placement (but didn't have that as part of their explicit mission).
I think this is a fair question, and I'm sure they'll address it in whatever way is necessary. As a startup, it's best to have a focus, otherwise you're just another generic recruiter.
It's possible that they'll need to tweak how they express that focus in terms of site design and onboarding process. I mean, if a site as big as eHarmony had to change their approach, it's quite likely a startup will run into similar issues. (I haven't tried signing up with Jopwell to see how they implemented the workflow, so I have no idea what it says currently.)
It may have some sort of precedent/protection in US affirmative action doctrine, but I'm not so sure a lawsuit would be immediately dismissed. Anybody with more US anti-discrimination law knowledge feel free to add in.