Plaintiffs Fight to Continue Systemic Race Discrimination Class Action Against Google

Last March, several former Google employees filed a proposed class action alleging the tech giant’s corporate culture imposes a systemic bias against Black workers. The parties are now engaged in a battle over whether the class claims should be dismissed out of hand.

The case arises from allegations that Google’s employment practices, company-wide, evince racial discrimination against Black employees. Per the complaint, “Google assigns Black professionals to lower-level roles, pays them less, unfairly rates their performance, and denies them advancement and leadership roles because of their race.” The central leadership is “nearly devoid of Black representation,” and any employee who challenges the company’s “discriminatory practices” will “suffer retaliation.” The plaintiffs share a number of anecdotes in which qualified Black workers were passed over in hiring or promotions, racially-charged “dog whistle” language was used by managers, and employees who reported racial bias were put on performance improvement plans or terminated outright.

The plaintiffs seek to represent a class of current and former Black Google employees as well as rejected applicants. Google filed a motion to dismiss the class allegations, arguing that the plaintiffs' claims are too disparate for collective treatment and that the proposed classes are too large to feasibly litigate. Dismissal of the class claims would force aggrieved plaintiffs to litigate each of their claims individually, at significantly greater cost and hassle.

The plaintiffs argue that dismissal of the class claims is procedurally inappropriate at this stage. The parties can fight over the merits of class certification at the appropriate time after discovery has been conducted. The plaintiffs contend that Google's only in-jurisdiction example of class claims being dismissed at the pleading stage “was an extraordinary case, involving extraordinary failures by the sole plaintiff who sought to represent six age and gender subclasses.” Under normal circumstances, if plaintiffs state a claim for relief, the merits of class certification are addressed later. Debating the commonality of class member claims requires a fact-intensive inquiry, bolstered by discovery.

The plaintiffs assert, nevertheless, that their complaint alleges systemic discrimination across the entire company, and their claims share more than sufficient common issues of unlawful, race-based treatment. Their claims can be proven (or disproven) with classwide proof, including statistical analyses, and are not so factually distinct as to require individual assessment for adjudication.

The class action is just one of many high-profile legal woes for the company that once touted its “don’t be evil” motto. Google has paid upwards of $600 million over the last few months to settle claims that its collection and use of user data violate consumer privacy laws. In January, the Department of Justice and eight state attorneys general filed an antitrust lawsuit alleging the tech giant monopolizes ads by excluding competitors. If forced to divest its advertising business, Google would suffer billions of dollars in lost revenue.