FOIA Advisor

FOIA News: Should Company Diversity Data be Protected under Ex. 4?

FOIA News (2015-2023)Allan BlutsteinComment

Op-Ed: Corporation Claims Diversity Data Is Secret. That’s A Problem for Journalism––and Democracy

By Victoria Baranetsky & Shawn Musgrave. Columbia Journalism Rev., Oct. 12, 2021

EARLIER THIS YEAR, Synopsys, Inc., a Silicon Valley-based technology company and federal contractor that produces computer chips and software, published its demographic diversity data on its website. The company’s “talent snapshot” for 2020 showed that just 1 percent of its overall employees in the United States were Black, 3 percent were Hispanic/Latinx, and just 23 percent of its global employees were women. That same company now claims in federal court that the raw numbers underneath these public percentages are a trade secret and thus exempt from government disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

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