The author of a controversial memo that sparked debates about gender and diversity at Google sued his former employer on Monday, alleging that the company discriminates against politically conservative white men.
James Damore, who was fired in August for internally circulating a manifesto that argued Google’s gender pay gap was the result of genetic differences that tend to favor men, said in a lawsuit filed in Santa Clara Superior Court that the search giant “singled out, mistreated, and systematically punished and terminated” employees who deviated from the company’s view on diversity. Damore and a second plaintiff, David Gudeman, another former Google engineer, are seeking class-action status for anyone who identifies as conservative, Caucasian, or male.
The men are being represented by Harmeet K. Dhillon, the Republican National Committee’s committeewoman for California.
“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,” the suit reads. “… Google employs illegal hiring quotas to fill its desired percentages of women and favored minority candidates, and openly shames managers of business units who fail to meet their quotas—in the process, openly denigrating male and Caucasian employees as less favored than others. Not only was the numerical presence of women celebrated at Google solely due to their gender, but the presence of…
