Anti-Diversity Memo Author Sues Google For Discrimination Against White Conservative Men
A former Google senior software engineer who was fired by the search giant over his controversial 3,300 words anti-diversity memo filed a class-action lawsuit against the company on Monday in Santa Clara Superior Court in Northern California for its discriminatory behavior against white males with conservative political leanings.
Another ex-employee from Google, David Gudeman, who is a co-plaintiff in the lawsuit is supporting Damore’s cause. The lawsuit seeks non-monetary, monetary, and punitive compensations.
Damore was fired after writing a 10-page memo titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber: How bias clouds our thinking about diversity and inclusion” that questioned company’s diversity policies. Even though it was circulated internally initially in July, it gained attention in August when Motherboard published the memo, saying the “anti-diversity memo” had gone “internally viral” at the Mountain View, Calif.-based technology company.
Damore’s memo which claimed that the inequality in payment of wages existed between men and women was because the latter was “biologically” less capable than the former caused a tumult in the tech industry. Calling the memo as “offensive” and “harmful,” Google soon fired Damore from the company.
According to the lawsuit, “Google employees who expressed views deviating from the majority view at Google on political subjects raised in the workplace and relevant to Google’s employment policies and its business, such as ‘diversity’ hiring policies, ‘bias sensitivity,’ or ‘social justice’ were/are singled out, mistreated, and systematically punished and terminated from Google, in violation of their legal rights.”
The suit further accuses Google of employing “illegal hiring quotas to fill its desired percentages of women and favored minority candidates,” and claims managers who are unable to meet these quotas are openly shamed.
San Francisco-based Dhillon Law Group who filed the lawsuit on behalf of Damore and Gudeman said, “Damore, Gudeman, and other class members were ostracized, belittled, and punished for their heterodox political views, and for the added sin of their birth circumstances of being Caucasian and/or males. Google’s open hostility for conservative thought is paired with invidious discrimination on the basis of race and gender, barred by law.
“Google’s management goes to extreme — and illegal — lengths to encourage hiring managers to take protected categories such as race and/or gender into consideration as determinative hiring factors, to the detriment of Caucasian and male employees and potential employees at Google,” it says.
When Google was contacted to comment on the issue, their spokesperson only said, “We look forward to defending against Mr. Damore’s lawsuit in court.”
In September last year, three former female employees working at Google’s Mountain View headquarters in California had filed a class-action lawsuit against the company claiming that it “engaged in systemic and pervasive pay and promotion discrimination.” The complaint claimed that women were paid less than men, given lower paying jobs, and promoted less often. However, Google denied these claims.
