Law Firms
Judge tosses bias suit over BigLaw firm’s diversity hiring program for summer associates
A straight, white female lawyer can’t sue King & Spalding over exclusion from a diversity hiring program for summer associates because of a “paucity of allegations” that she was ready and able to apply, a federal judge ruled Monday. (Image from Shutterstock)
A straight, white female lawyer can’t sue King & Spalding over exclusion from a diversity hiring program for summer associates because of a “paucity of allegations” that she was ready and able to apply, a federal judge ruled Monday.
The plaintiff, Sarah Spitalnick, said she didn’t apply for the position while she was a 1L at the University of Baltimore School of Law because she thought that it would have been a futile gesture. The February 2021 job ad that she saw for the program said candidates “must have an ethnically or culturally diverse background or be a member of the LGBT community.”
But U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar of the District of Maryland said mere allegations about being ready and able to apply aren’t enough. Spitalnick’s lawsuit says nothing about steps that she took to apply or inquire about the position or about considering similar positions, he said.
Spitalnick “faces an uphill climb to plead an actual or imminent injury—a climb she ultimately fails to summit,” Bredar wrote in the Feb. 24 opinion.
Reuters and Law360 covered the decision.
Bredar noted that Spitalnick sued more than three years after she saw the ad. She wasn’t able to show that she was ready and able to apply in 2021 or that she remained ready and able when she sued, he said. It “strains credulity” to think that the job posting was still up in 2024, and she was already a lawyer at that time.
Spitalnick “supplies no reason to believe she would have remained interested in, let alone eligible for, an internship for first-year law students,” wrote Bredar, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.
The King & Spalding program was sponsored by the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity, a third-party organization.
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