A new lawsuit is echoing previous claims that tech giant Google regularly discriminates against Black employees.
The suit was filed on Friday, according to The New York Times, and it alleges that the company regularly practices bias against Blacks by hiring them in lower-level positions, paying them less and denying them advancement opportunities.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose by plaintiff April Curley and is seeking class-action status.
Curley worked at Google from 2014 to 2020, when she was dismissed. One of her roles was to create strategic ways to recruit Black talent from HBCUs.
As previously reported by theGrio, California state investigators began looking into how Google treats Black employees in 2021. The state’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing began by interviewing Black women who had worked for the tech giant.
The Times reports that Curley’s lawsuit complaint reads, in part, “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 throughout the United States.”
The suit claims that in addition to underpaying Black employees by putting them in roles that were below their education and experience, Google managers would “haze” Black applicants with intentionally difficult job interview questions.
Curley also alleges that she was forced to work in a hostile work environment, including being silenced in meetings and being asked who she would want to sleep with by a manager.
She added that retaliatory measures were taken against her as she began to speak up about the work conditions, including a pay reduction, a performance plan and, ultimately, her termination.
As previously reported by theGrio, Google spokeswoman Jennifer Rodstrom said in a statement that they “have a large team of recruiters who work incredibly hard to increase the hiring of Black+ and other underrepresented talent at Google, including a dedicated team that partners and strengthens our relationships with HBCUs.” But, per The Washington Post, administrators at HBCUs have contradicted Rodstrom’s assertions, noting that Google has provided an increase in internships, not in job offers.
The tech giant has yet to comment on the new lawsuit.
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