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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.
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.
