Former Google engineer suing company for discriminating against conservative, white males
The former Google engineer who was fired in August last year after suggesting women were "biologically" less capable of being good engineers has filed a class action lawsuit against the company.
James Damore made international headlines when it was revealed he had been sacked after sending an internal memo saying the reason there were fewer women than men in the tech industry was biological.
He is now claiming that Google discriminates against politically conservative white men.
Another former Google engineer, David Gudeman, has joined Damore in filing the 161-page lawsuit after leaving the company in 2016, according to TechCrunch.com.
The lawsuit says it aims to represent Google employees who are male, Caucasian, and who are discriminated against on the basis of “perceived conservative political views by Google."
It accuses Google of mistreating and firing 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’.”
The contents of the lawsuit are bound to drum up controversy, with no-holds-barred wording that accuses Google of a hiring policy that favours women and "minority" candidates and "shames" business unit managers who fail to meet diversity and gender "quotas".
Damore also claims that women are only employed by Google to fill quotas, rather than because of their skills and expertise in their jobs, and that white males were mocked with "boos" during weekly meetings.
While many have condemned Damore's views, others in the Silicon Valley tech world have wondered if there was a bias at Google that disallowed the open expression of politically conservative viewpoints.
In a statement, Google said it fired Damore for code of conduct violations and for promoting “harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”
After his firing, Damore became something of a TV-circuit celebrity, controversially likening being a white male conservative at Google to "being gay in the 1950s."
In September 2017, three female ex-employees of Google filed their own lawsuit, claiming the company did not pay men and women equally, a claim which Google has denied.
