Disabled, Transgender Ex-Google Engineer Sues Tech Giant For Not Being Liberal Enough

Authored by Aman Jain via Valuewalk.com,

Google has again been accused of discrimination, retaliation and harassment by an employee. Tim Chevalier, a software developer and former site-reliability engineer at the search giant, filed a lawsuit on Wednesday in San Francisco County Superior Court.

Just last month a similar lawsuit was filed by an ex-Google engineer James Damore, who was sacked after he circulated the misogynist iniquitous 33,000-word memo talking about diversity at the company. The lawsuit argued that the search engine giant discriminates against white conservative men.

This recent lawsuit is another glimpse into the working culture of Google. According to Chevalier, Google fired him for his posts and memes on racism and sexism at the company, and for commenting on the infamous Damore memo.

Chevalier, a transgender and disabled, in a lawsuit stated that Google could not protect its minority, female and LGBTQ employees who are subjected to continuous harassment on internal forums. On the other hand, it took instant actions against the employees who encountered racism, homophobia and sexism at work.

“It is a cruel irony that Google attempted to justify firing me by claiming that my social networking posts showed bias against my harassers,” Chevalier said in a statement to The Verge.

Chevalier mentioned in the lawsuit that a Google HR representative met with him last year in September to discuss about his posts on the internal forums. Further, the lawsuit said that a common point in the offending posts was applying “politically liberal views to the ongoing political debates between Googlers.” The ex-Googler stated that six months after the conversation, he was fired.

In his complaint, Chevalier stated that according to HR, the term “White Boys” could be perceived as the generalization about the race or gender. Further, HR was also not happy with the internal Google+ post, where Chevalier criticized Republicans for associating themselves with protesters at the White-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

There are three other employees apart from Chevalier, who alleged that Google disciplined the employees from raising a voice against the discrimination. One of the employees spoke to Gizmodo on the condition of anonymity as they are not allowed to speak publicly about their work experience at Google.

In response to the latest lawsuit, a spokesperson from the company said:

“An important part of our culture is lively debate. But like any workplace, that doesn’t mean anything goes. All employees acknowledge our code of conduct and other workplace policies, under which promoting harmful stereotypes based on race or gender is prohibited.”

Further, the spokesperson stated that this it is a very standard expectation that most employers expect from their employees, and that the majority of Google employees express their opinion and get involved in discussions within the boundaries that have been appropriately drawn up by Google. However, when an employee defies it, the search giant takes the matter seriously.

“We always make our decision without any regard to the employee’s political views,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

Meanwhile, last week, the U.S. National Labor Relations Board clarified that the search giant did not break any rules by firing Damore. The agency believes that Damore was not ousted because he criticized the policies of Google, but over “unprotected discriminatory statements” in his memo.