Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge
- Engineer claimed tech giant violated his labor law rights
- U.S. lawyer said ‘discriminatory statements’ aren’t protected
James Damore, right, speaks at a news conference with his attorney, Harmeet Dhillon, on Jan. 8, in San Francisco.
Photographer: Michael Liedtke/AP Photo
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Google’s firing of an engineer over his controversial memo criticizing its diversity policies and “politically correct monoculture” didn’t violate U.S. labor law, a federal agency lawyer concluded.
Statements in James Damore’s 3,000-word memo “regarding biological differences between the sexes were so harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive” that they fell outside protections for collective action in the workplace, an associate general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board wrote in a six-page memo disclosed Thursday.