There's no such thing as a protected group in US law - a protected class means a certain property of someone that employment decisions can't depend on, not a value of that property.
There's no such thing as a protected group in US law - a protected class means a certain property of someone that employment decisions can't depend on, not a value of that property.
First, I'll say it is pretty common to use the terms interchangeably. I don't think anyone was confused by what I wrote, or that your "clarification" was in any way helpful. See, for example, these legal groups using the term "protected group" in relation to US employment law:
* https://www.osbar.org/public/legalinfo/1095_DiscriminationEm...
* https://pedersenlaw.com/practice-areas/discrimination/
Secondly, I used the phrase "protected group" referring to disparate impact, and here, your assertion (to the extent it has any validity at all) is simply incorrect. The entire idea is to ferret out subtle acts of discrimination that have an outsize impact on a group consisting of members of a protected class, and in the case law you see the phrase "protected group" used explicitly. For example:
0 - https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=637945611431669...