A former Google employee is now suing the company, claiming he was wrongfully terminated for his criticism of an anti-diversity memo sent to staff members last year, Wired Magazine reports.
Tim Chevalier, a transgender former site reliability engineer at Google, says that he was fired for his politically liberal rebuttal to former programmer James Damore’s post on one of the company’s internal messaging boards.
Chevalier posted multiple charged responses to Damore’s memo, calling it “misogynistic” for saying biological differences between men and women were behind the gender pay gap and that women were less suited to be engineers.
Included in Chevalier’s posts was a link to a blog post where he wrote that “white boys” feel threatened when they don’t receive the privilege they expect, along with others that stereotyped Republicans.
According to Chevalier, he was fired six weeks after human resources met with him to discuss his posts on internal forums, in November 2017.
Chevalier said in a press release: “It is a cruel irony that Google attempted to justify firing me by claiming that my social networking posts showed bias against my harassers. The anti-discrimination laws are meant to protect marginalized and underrepresented groups- not those who attack them.”
Damore was fired over the memo that Google also said violated its codes of conduct, and returned fire with a class-action lawsuit claiming the company actively discriminates against conservative white men.
Damore in his 3,000 word memo argued that Google’s diversity initiatives were misguided. He also said biological differences explained why there were more men than women in tech jobs, claiming that men are more suited to high-stress jobs and less prone to neuroticism.
Damore has claimed he was fired for challenging the company’s “ideological echo chamber.”