On Wednesday, a federal judge decided to drastically decrease the settlement in a Tesla racial discrimination case from $137 million to $15 million.
As previously reported, Owen Diaz worked as an elevator operator for Tesla between June 2015 and May 2016. He sued the company in 2017, alleging a hostile work environment and racial harassment.
A federal judge has decided that he will no longer receive the $137 million after Tesla appealed the verdict.
Stay Connected
Subscribe to updates from The Shade Room
Larry Organ, Diaz’s lawyer and founder of the California Civil Rights Law Group, told NPR:
That’s the maximum. It wasn’t because [the judge] found anything wrong with what Mr. Diaz said or that Mr. Diaz wasn’t injured or anything like that. It’s just based on a comparison.
Diaz claimed other people called him the n-word during his tenure at the company, including a supervisor who called him the derogatory term “more than 30 times.”
In a message sent to Tesla employees last year, the company stated the facts didn’t justify the judgement.
… We do recognize that in 2015 and 2016 we were not perfect,” then-Vice President of People Valerie Capers Workman wrote. “We’re still not perfect.
Workman added:
We will continue to remind everyone who enters the Tesla workplace that any discriminatory slurs – no matter the intent or who is using them – will not be tolerated.
Diaz has a little over 25 days to alert the courts of his acceptance or rejection of the new ruling.
