Anti-Diversity Memo Author Sues Google for Alleged Discrimination Against White Conservative Men

In a class action lawsuit filed today, Damore and another former Google employee, David Gudeman, claim that Google discriminated against them for their conservative views, their male gender, and their “Caucasian race.”

Google fired Damore in August after Gizmodo published his memo. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said at the time that parts of Damore’s memo “violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”

After leaving Google, Damore became something of an alt-right hero and spoke out on Twitter about how “cool” he found Ku Klux Klan titles like Grand Wizard. The alt-right community rallied around him in the wake of his dismissal, calling for a boycott of the search giant.

“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,” the lawsuit claims. “Damore, Gudeman, and other class members were ostracized, belittled, and punished for their heterodox political views, and for the added sin of their birth circumstances of being Caucasians and/or males.”

The lawsuit also accuses Google of creating an “ideological echo chamber,” borrowing a phrase directly from Damore’s memo. {snip}.

Damore was fired on August 7th for “perpetuating gender stereotypes,” the lawsuit alleges.

Gudeman, Damore’s co-plaintiff, worked as an engineer at Google for three years before being let go in 2016. The lawsuit claims that he left a comment on a document written by a female Google engineer in which Gudeman asserted that white men are “victims of a racist and sexist political movement and it is not their fault.”

{snip}

Gudeman also posted supportive comments on internal forums about then-President-elect Donald Trump in the fall of 2016 and bickered with a Muslim co-worker who wrote about his fears of religious discrimination. Gudeman wrote that he looked into the employee’s background and questioned him about a recent trip to Pakistan, according to the lawsuit. These comments led to his termination in December 2016.