Does Google Discriminate Against White Male Conservatives?

A former Google Engineer, James Damore, filed a class action lawsuit against Google claiming that they discriminate against white, male, conservatives after he was fired in August. Damore’s firing occurred after he posted a memo to an internal message board at the company presenting a very specific argument:

Damore’s memo argued that women may not be equally represented in tech because they are “biologically less capable” of engineering.

In response to his termination, Damore filed a class action lawsuit against Google in Santa Clara Superior Court. In his suit, Damore claims that Google unfairly discriminates against white men with conservative political views that are not “popular” with Google execs. 

Damore is not making allegations alone either. He is joined by another former Google engineer: David Gudeman. Gudeman spent 3 years working on a query engine for the company. According to his publicly accessible LinkedIn profile, Gudeman left Google in December 2016 and has since been self-employed.

The lawsuit states that it is intended to represent any employees of Google that have been discriminated against as a result of their “perceived conservative political views” by the company or due to their male gender or being a Caucasian. The plaintiffs specifically accuse Google of singling out and systematically mistreating employees that express views that deviate from the popular or “norm” at Google pertaining to various political topics raised in the workplace and/or issues that are relevant to Google’s policies and procedures in relation to employment or business. The lawsuit includes examples, such as: diversity hiring policies, bias sensitivity, social justice, etc.

The men are seeking monetary, non-monetary and punitive remedies.

Google stated that Damore was fired for violating the company code of conduct and promoting negative gender stereotypes in the workplace. The Labor Department is conducting a separate investigation into systemic pay discrimination at Google, but Google denies that there is a problem stating that they have found no pay gap in their own analysis.

If you need assistance filing a California wrongful termination law suit, please get in touch with one of the experienced employment law attorneys at Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP.