A jury ordered that Tesla will have to pay more than $3 million on Monday in a racial profiling case brought by a former employee at its Fremont, California, assembly plant.
The case was brought by Owen Diaz, who worked as an elevator operator at the plant from 2015 to 2016, who testified that he regularly heard racial slurs on the floor of the Fremont factory, saw racist graffiti and cartoons in bathrooms.
The San Francisco federal jury said the Austin, Texas-based electric car company led by Elon Musk will have to pay Diaz a total of $3.175 million.
It should be noted that, in October 2021, a jury awarded him $137 million in damages in the case, one of the highest sums for a single plaintiff for racial harassment, but a federal judge dismissed that award as excessive.
In turn, U.S. District Judge William Orrick offered Díaz $15 million in damages in the case, and as part of a reduced pay offer, but Díaz rejected the offer and opted for a new trial, in which the jury awarded Díaz this new amount.
The lawsuit is separate from another case brought by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, which said the agency had received "hundreds" of complaints from workers alleging racism and harassment at the Fremont factory.
Tesla has denied charges that the situation was as bad as alleged in the two lawsuits, but conceded that there were issues that needed to be addressed at the plant.
At the time, Tesla said in a statement that "while we firmly believe that these facts do not justify the verdict reached by the jury in San Francisco, we recognize that in 2015 and 2016 we were not perfect."
“We are still not perfect. But we have come a long way since 5 years ago. We continue to grow and improve the way we address employee concerns. Occasionally, we will be wrong and when that happens, we must be held accountable.
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