'Pigeon-Holed Into Dead-End Jobs': Google Discriminates Against Black Workers, Lawsuit Says

A former Google employee sued the tech giant for racial discrimination, saying it engages in a “pattern and practice” of unfair treatment of its Black workers. The suit claims the company steered them into lower-level and lower-paid jobs and subjected them to a hostile work environment if they spoke out.

April Curley was hired in 2014 to recruit Black candidates for the company. Her lawsuit, filed on Friday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose, claims she was unlawfully fired in 2020 after she began speaking out and “called for reform of the barriers and double standards Google imposed on Black employees and applicants,” according to the lawsuit.

“Pursuant to its strong, racially biased corporate culture, Google is engaged in a pattern and practice of race discrimination against its African American and Black employees,” the complaint states. “Google’s centralized leadership, which is nearly devoid of Black representation, holds biased and stereotypical views about the abilities and potential of Black professionals.”

As a result, the lawsuit continues, Black employees are paid less, advance less and often leave the company.

A representative for Google did not immediately respond to a message for comment on Monday.

The lawsuit, which seeks class-action status, echoes years of complaints from Black employees at the company. That includes prominent artificial intelligence scholar Timnit Gebru, who said she was pushed out in 2020 after a dispute over a research paper examining the societal dangers of an emerging branch of artificial intelligence.

At the time, Gebru posted on Twitter that she was fired but Google told employees she resigned. More than 1,200 Google employees signed on to an open letter calling the incident “unprecedented research censorship” and faulting the company for racism and defensiveness.

Allegations of discrimination based on gender also are not new to Google. In 2017, James Damore, a former employee at the company, wrote an internal memo arguing against practices that sought to improve gender and racial disparities at the company. While Damore was fired for violating Google’s code of conduct, he said in the memo that he was encouraged to share his views by like-minded co-workers.

Three former Google professionals filed a class-action complaint against Google in 2017, alleging the company failed to pay men and women a similar wage for similar work. The case was granted class-action status in 2021 and is being actively litigated for a class of over 11,000 former female employees, saying Google engaged in “systemic and pervasive pay and promotion discrimination against its female employees in California.”

In 2014, Google began publishing an annual diversity report. Figures from 2021 show that the company is about 50% white, 42% Asian, 6% Latinx+, 4% Black+ and less than 1 % Native American.

The 2021 report also shows that employees who identify as Black women and Native American leave the company at a rate far higher than the national average for employee retention, something they call their “attrition index.” The report stated, “When it comes to our efforts to retain underrepresented talent, we have room for improvement.”

In a 2020 letter, Google CEO Sundar Pichai outlined steps the company is taking to increase diversity by 2025, saying the company will improve leadership representation in underrepresented groups by 30%. Google also has committed to doubling the amount of Black+ employees. Google also has committed to doubling the amount of Black+ employees (“workers who identify as more than one race, one of which is Black,” according to The New York Times) in nonleadership roles by 2025.

Still, Curley’s lawsuit claims the company viewed Black job candidates “through harmful racial stereotypes” and claimed that hiring managers deemed Black candidates “not ‘Googly’ enough, a plain dog whistle for race discrimination.”

In addition, according to the suit, interviewers “hazed” and undermined Black candidates and hired Black candidates into lower-paying and lower-level roles with less advancement potential based on their race and racial stereotypes.

Curley and others, according to the suit, were often “pigeon-holed into dead-end jobs.”

The lawsuit states that Google, which hired Curley specifically to recruit Black candidates for the company, wanted her to “quietly put on a good face for the company and toe the company line.” Instead, according to the suit, she was a champion for Black employees and Black students who “vocally opposed and called for reform of the barriers and double standards Google imposed on Black employees and applicants.”

In response, the complaint says, Google “unlawfully marginalized, undermined, and ultimately terminated” Curley.

KQED’s Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman contributed reporting for this story.