A lawsuit has accused Google of systematic racial bias against black employees, saying the company hires them in lower-level jobs, pays them lower salaries and denies them promotion opportunities because of their race.
The lawsuit, filed on Friday, said Google was pursuing a "racially biased culture" that favors white people at the expense of blacks, who make up only 4.4% of employees and about 3% of the leadership and its tech workforce.
Plaintiff April Curley said Alphabet's Google placed black people in a hostile work environment, often by asking them to show their identity or questioning them by security at its Mountain View, California, headquarters.
The lawsuit was filed in Federal Court in San Jose, California.
Google employees stage a
The lawsuit came after the state's civil rights regulator began an investigation into Google's treatment of black female employees and their potential for discrimination in their workplace.
Curley said Google hired her in 2014 to design an outreach program for historically black colleges. She added that her appointment proved to be a "marketing ploy" as managers began to discredit her work, calling her an "angry" black woman and ignoring her in promotions.
The plaintiff noted that Google fired her in September 2020 after she and her colleagues began work on a list of needed fixes.