California is considering a ban on caste discrimination. Tech companies have been grappling with this issue since 2020 when California’s employment regulator sued Cisco Systems on behalf of a low-caste engineer who accused two higher-caste bosses of blocking his career. Adding caste to a general code of conduct is not unheard of. The World Wide Web Consortium, an industry standards body partly based in Massachusetts, introduced it in July 2020. California State University and the state Democratic Party have followed over the past two years. In May this year, California’s employment regulator, the Civil Rights Department, added caste to its example equal employment opportunity policy for employers. By contrast, many employers are hesitant to go beyond laws with their primary policies, according to three Employment attorneys including partner Koray Bulut. “Most companies simply quote from the federal and state statutes that list the protected categories,” Bulut said to Firstpost.