By Daniel Wiessner
Sept 21 (Reuters) – A California agency’s lawsuit accusing Tesla of allowing rampant race discrimination at its flagship assembly plant is set to go to trial on Monday, one of a series of similar lawsuits being faced by the electric vehicle maker.
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Lawyers for Tesla and the California Civil Rights Department will square off in Oakland before state Superior Court Judge Peter Borkon, who has scheduled the trial to run until October 30.
In the lawsuit filed in 2022, the California Civil Rights Department claims Black workers at Tesla’s Fremont, California plant were subjected to pervasive harassment by other employees, including racial slurs and graffiti, and Tesla failed to prevent or stop it. Tesla is also accused of paying Black workers less than others and depriving them of opportunities for promotions.
Tesla and its lawyers did not respond to requests for comment. The company has denied wrongdoing and said that it does not tolerate discrimination and has fired workers found to have engaged in misconduct.
The California Civil Rights Department’s director, Kevin Kish, in a statement said the agency looked forward to holding Tesla accountable.
Tesla’s high profile and the thousands of workers involved in the case make it among the most significant involving employment discrimination claims against a major US company to go to trial in recent years.
NO CAP ON DAMAGES
Borkon has scheduled a bench trial, meaning that he and not a jury will decide whether Tesla is liable for violations of California civil rights laws.
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Unlike federal law, the California law barring workplace discrimination does not cap the damages a court can award to affected workers, and Tesla could be on the hook for many millions of dollars if it loses the case.
Tesla has for the last decade been dogged by claims that it fostered a climate at the Fremont plant and other facilities that was extremely hostile to Black workers. The company is also facing a lawsuit from the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging racial harassment, and dozens of lawsuits by individual workers making similar claims.
The claims in the Civil Rights Department’s lawsuit are broader and include allegations that the Fremont plant was racially segregated, with Black workers assigned to the lowest-paying and least desirable jobs.
Borkon ruled in a separate lawsuit last year that more than 6,000 Black workers could not sue Tesla as a class, reversing an earlier decision and handing a major victory to the company.
Tesla has settled some of the individual lawsuits, including one by a former elevator operator at the Fremont plant who was awarded $137 million by a jury, a sum that was later slashed by a judge.
(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Rosalba O’Brien)
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