Fearless Fund, an Atlanta-based venture capital firm that invests in women of colour, is the latest legal target of conservative activists who oppose race-based diversity programmes.
The four year-old fund, which has invested in more than 40 companies, including beauty brands Bread Beauty, Brown Girl Jane and The Lip Bar according to its website, is being sued for alleged racial discrimination by The American Alliance for Equal Rights. The same organisation, founded by conservative activist Edward Blum, was behind the lawsuit that led the US Supreme Court to declare affirmative action in college admissions unconstitutional. (Fearless Fund and AAER did not immediately respond to BoF’s request for comment.)
The group’s latest suit, filed last week in federal court in Atlanta, takes aim at the Fund’s Fearless Strivers Grant Contest, a Mastercard-backed event that awards $20,000 small business grants to Black women four times a year. The conservative group claims the programme violates the Civil Rights Act of 1866 by making only Black women eligible for the award.
In its choice of target and legal argument, the litigation lends fresh weight to warnings from activists, minority entrepreneurs and others that corporate diversity efforts could be next in the crosshairs after the Supreme Court’s June decision.
In fashion and beauty, many companies have touted minority hiring programmes, investments in Black-owned businesses and other diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the wake of the racial justice protests of 2020. Were the AAER to prevail in court, the fear is that initiatives that explicitly seek to increase minority representation could be deemed illegal. Some also anticipate the case itself to have a chilling effect on such efforts, regardless of the outcome.
“This lawsuit, whether it sticks or not, puts us on high alert — and not just Black people but minorities in general,” said Rashae Barnes, a celebrity publicist who this year launched her own…
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