Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Google Sued For Discrimination

Google is being sued by James Bara, a Georgia-based former employee for sexual and religious discrimination in violation of the Civil Rights Act.

From TechCrunch:

Lawsuits can be the source of all sorts of surprising and off the wall stories and this one, filed by a Google Atlanta-based former data center employee takes the cake. In the lawsuit, which was filed on Oct. 29 in a federal court in Atlanta, the former employee, James Bara, alleges both sexual and religious discrimination from his superior.

While it doesn’t sound juicy, the stories that Bara tells are. Bara was initially a contractor for Google’s Atlanta office, working as an assistant in the Data Center. After six months, he was hired by Google as a full-time employee. According to the complaint, all was rosy for the next two years until a female transgender employee joined the group Bara worked for. Bara’s boss, a woman named Pam Sohn, allegedly made inappropriate comments about this woman, and ridiculed her sexual preference.

From InformationWeek:

In his court filing, James Bara, a practicing Wiccan, claims that a manager in Google’s Atlanta office, Pam Sohn, made numerous jokes about the sexual orientation of a female transgendered employee who joined the company in July 2008.

“I informed Ms. Sohn the remarks were inappropriate and she stopped making them,” he says in his discrimination complaint. “Shortly thereafter, Ms. Sohn began making inappropriate comments about my religion.”

Bara’s complaint then describes a series of escalating human resources complaints and alleged workplace retaliation.

He charges that he began being treated differently in the office and was required to be in the office when female workers were not.

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