A former Google employee jas filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging that it systematically discriminated against Black workers by placing them in lower-level jobs, underpaying them, and denying them opportunities to advance.
The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose, asks for class-action status. April Curley is the plaintiff, and she worked at Google from 2014 until she was fired in 2020. During her time at the company, Ms. Curley was instrumental in bringing in Black employees by developing programs to recruit from historically Black colleges and universities.
“Google is engaged in a nationwide pattern or practice of intentional race discrimination and retaliation, and maintains employment policies and practices that have a disparate impact against Black employees across the United States,” according to the complaint.
A Google spokesman did not respond immediately to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
The lawsuit echoes many of the grievances that Black employees have raised about working at Google over the years. Despite growing to become one of the largest private employers in the United States, the company has struggled to increase racial and gender diversity in its workforce, particularly among its highly paid engineering staff.
According to Google’s 2021 diversity report, 4.4 percent of its U.S. employees identified as “Black+,” which includes employees who identify as more than one race, one of which is Black. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this is far below the national average of 9.1 percent for digital publishing and search companies.
According to the lawsuit, Google routinely hired Black employees at lower job levels than were appropriate for their experience. Because pay is tied to job level, the company was able to underpay Black employees in comparison to their peers.
Qualified Black candidates were frequently deemed insufficiently “Googly,” an arbitrary designation that served as a “dog whistle” for racial discrimination, according to the complaint. It also claimed that Google “hazed” Black job candidates with deliberately difficult questions in order for them to perform poorly in interviews, and that Google hired Black workers into lower-paying and lower-level jobs with less advancement potential.
Ms. Curley also stated that she worked in a hostile environment. Managers frequently mistook her for two other Black female coworkers during her six years at the company, she claims. She claimed that she and her colleagues were not allowed to speak or present during important meetings, and that she felt humiliated and sexualized when a manager asked which colleagues she wanted to sleep with.
According to the lawsuit, Ms. Curley’s pay was reduced and she was reprimanded in 2019 for speaking up in team meetings and challenging internal practices. Ms. Curley was placed on a performance improvement plan a year later, and her employment was terminated in September 2020.