A Google employee who was terminated in November 2017 filed a lawsuit against the company in a California court. He is seeking lost wages, punitive damages and compensation for emotional distress. He claims that his termination was retaliation for posts defending women of color and similar groups, and he asserts that the termination was discriminatory in nature.
The worker was both disabled and transgender, and he worked for the company as a site-reliability engineer. According to Google, he was terminated for engaging in conduct that promoted harmful stereotypes. The company reportedly does not take an employee’s political views into consideration when taking action based on its code of conduct. The man was referenced in another lawsuit claiming that Google allowed liberal views to go unchecked while discriminating against conservatives.
The man claims that he was terminated by HR after posting to Google’s internal network that he was engaging in social activism. The post allegedly referenced the fact that he wouldn’t work with people like the former employee in the other lawsuit. According to the former site-reliability engineer’s attorney, the termination occurred because the company failed to monitor its social networks.
Employees may be terminated for a variety of reasons. However, as a general rule, they not be terminated as retaliation for expressing a viewpoint or because that person is disabled. If an individual experiences a wrongful termination, it may be possible to seek punitive damages as well as reimbursement for lost wages. In some cases, employees who are illegally terminated might be entitled to their jobs back. An attorney may be able to review a case to determine if an employee was wrongfully terminated by an employer.
