I'm not a lawyer, and have no idea if there is already precedent in the US specifically regarding castes, but there is a motion that national origin covers ancestry.
It's entirely possible that the legal department in the story above thought it was a cut and dry case and that's why they pushed hard to shut it down before it became one.
Yeah it sounds like legal saw it as cut and dry at least that he could be fired (and possibly that they also had a requirement to do so), while HR folks were making nonsensical arguments of the kind we're seeing here from non-lawyers.
I'm not a lawyer, and have no idea if there is already precedent in the US specifically regarding castes, but there is a motion that national origin covers ancestry.
It's entirely possible that the legal department in the story above thought it was a cut and dry case and that's why they pushed hard to shut it down before it became one.