The law firm representing former Google engineer James Damore is updating their lawsuit against the tech giant to include even more plaintiffs and alleged evidence.
Lead attorney Harmeet Dhillon and her team rescinded Damore’s complaint filed to the National Labor Relations Board, yet they are continuing on with their class action lawsuit that accuses Google of gender, race, and ideological discrimination. With the addition of three more plaintiffs — job applicants alleging they were unduly turned down due to diversity hiring quotas — the lawsuit seems to be gaining steam.
“Google has adopted a pattern and practice of disparately and adversely treating similarly situated job applicants because of the applicants’ race, sex, and political affiliations and activities,” the amended lawsuit reads. “Google and its management fetishize ‘diversity’ as measured by these protected characteristics only, and mandate that the percentage of non-Caucasian/Asian, non-male, and non-conservatives employed by Google increase rapidly over time.”
With these stipulations, and the charge that “Google assigns negative value to applications” based on the aforementioned traits, the plaintiffs allege the company is engaging in illegally discriminatory behavior.
For instance, obtained internal emails show a “Supplemental Headcount Program” that was “a last-ditch strategy for getting diverse talent into Google when all other avenues have been exhausted.”
“Diverse candidates are: Black, Hispanic, veterans, PWD [presumably persons with a disability], and L4+ women,” the suit reads, while embedding and citing the communications. “Notably Caucasians, Asians, and males are left out of Google’s definition, and are thus being eliminated for consideration for certain categories of job openings at Google.”
The lawsuit also includes screenshots of documents circulated throughout Google, some of which allegedly show that “Google failed to recognize its own hypocrisy.”
A “diversity business partner” in Google’s human resources department reportedly drafted an official policy that mandates training and the dissemination of a handout that describes “methods that race and gender bias can creep into performance management, and methods of preventing this from happening.”
This is “similar to the goals of Damore’s memo,” the lawsuit says, referencing the contentious missive the terminated engineer shared with coworkers through an internal forum made for the purpose of expressing thoughts. Damore outlined what he viewed as counterproductive diversity measures within the company, and provided his own unsolicited suggestions for Google to undertake and adapt to.
Damore, for example, wrote that rather than basing hiring on gender, which he argues is inherently sexist, Google should: “stop alienating conservatives,” “de-moralize diversity,” “de-emphasize empathy,” “confront Google’s biases” and “stop restricting programs and classes to certain genders or race,” among other ideas. Once the memo spread around the company, and then eventually to the public, severe backlash ensued. This led to his firing and Google CEO Sundar Pichai purporting that “people must be free to express dissent.” (RELATED: Report: Google Employees Are So Unsettled Over Company Bullying, About 100 Plan On Fighting Back)
Damore has had trouble finding work because of Google’s influence in the industry, he told The Daily Caller News Foundation in a February interview. Damore also said he witnessed employees admitting to using their powers and Google’s services to squash supporters and supportive content of President Donald Trump.
Damore’s lawsuit, which includes four other plaintiffs as well as anyone else who may have similarly been affected, is just one of many against Google.
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