James Damore was fired back in August after he penned a memo criticizing Google for its attempts to increase diversity. Damore's main argument was that there was a lack of diversity in tech because women are inferior to men.
Now he's filed a class action lawsuit along with another former Google employee, David Gudeman.
Alleged Discrimination
The class action lawsuit was filed because Damore argues that Google discriminated against him for being white, male, and having conservative political views. Damore's lawsuit invites other former Google employees who feel that they've been discriminated for falling into these three categories.
"Google 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,' were/are singled out, mistreated, and systematically punished and terminated from Google, in violation of their legal rights," states the lawsuit.
In the lawsuit, Damore paints himself as a model employee. He earned 8 performance bonuses and $150,000 per year stock bonuses since he started in 2013. Damore claims in the lawsuit that the only reason he was fired from the tech giant was for voicing a difference in opinions regarding diversity practices.
Diversity Manifesto
Damore's 10-page manifesto decrying diversity caused him to be fired. When he was fired by Google, chief executive Sundar Pichai said that "portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct."
"To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK. It is contrary to our basic values and our Code of Conduct, which expects 'each Googler to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination,'" said Pichai in a statement regarding Damore's manifesto.
It's ironic that the same man that calls women biologically inferior feels discriminated against after being fired. In his memo, Damore goes to describe how engineering roles can be changed to include more women but that it would be pointless to do so because it punishes those that already made it.
"Philosophically, I don't think we should do arbitrary social engineering of tech just to make it appealing to equal portions of both men and women," said Damore in his diversity memo. "For each of these changes, we need principles reasons for why it helps Google; that is, we should be optimizing for Google — with Google's diversity being a component of that."
