SAN FRANCISCO — James Damore was fired from his engineering job at Google last year
after he wrote a memo that criticized the company’s diversity efforts
and argued that the low number of women in engineering positions was a
result of biological differences.
Now
he is suing his former employer for workplace discrimination, claiming
that Google is biased against white men with conservative views.
The
lawsuit, filed Monday by Mr. Damore and another former Google employee
with California Superior Court of Santa Clara County, also claims that
the company uses illegal quotas in order to hire women and minorities.
The
two men “were ostracized, belittled and punished for their heterodox
political views, and for the added sin of their birth circumstances of
being Caucasians and/or males,” Harmeet K. Dhillon from the Dhillon Law
Group, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said in the lawsuit.
“Google’s open hostility for conservative thought is paired with
invidious discrimination on the basis of race and gender.”
Silicon Valley, often considered a bastion for liberal thinking, has been wrestling with how to deal with the culture wars
that have reverberated throughout the country. At the same time,
technology firms are trying to address the shortage of women and
minorities in their ranks.
Those
issues are coming to a head at Google, one of the richest and largest
technology companies in the world. Google is also fighting a pay discrimination lawsuit
brought by four women who worked at the company. The women claim that
Google systematically pays women less than men to do the same jobs.
Mr.
Damore’s memo last year argued that biological differences — citing
greater levels of anxiety among women, and a lower tolerance for stress —
helped explain why there were fewer women in key engineering positions
and leadership roles at Google. His writing sparked outrage at the
company and across Silicon Valley for rationalizing the pay and
opportunity gap at technology companies.
Mr. Damore’s dismissal became a rallying point for conservatives
who saw technology companies as workplaces dominated by groupthink. Ms.
Dhillon, the lawyer who brought the suit, is a committeewoman for
California in the Republican National Committee.
Google did not provide immediate comment about the lawsuit. Sundar Pichai, the company’s chief executive, said in the past
that Mr. Damore’s memo had violated the company’s code of conduct
because it advanced “harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/technology/google-memo-discrimination-lawsuit.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/technology/google-memo-discrimination-lawsuit.html