National Roundup

California
State accuses Tesla of racial discrimination in lawsuit
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California sued Tesla Inc. on Wednesday over allegations of discrimination and harassment of Black employees at its San Francisco Bay area factory.

The suit, filed in Alameda County Superior Court, was sparked by hundreds of worker complaints, said Kevin Kish, head of the state’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing.

The department, which enforces state civil rights laws, “found evidence that Tesla’s Fremont factory is a racially segregated workplace where Black workers are subjected to racial slurs and discriminated against in job assignments, discipline, pay, and promotion creating a hostile work environment,” Kish said in a statement reported by the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg.

Details of the lawsuit have yet to be released and Tesla didn’t immediately issue a response to the lawsuit, which the electric carmaker had warned was coming several days earlier in an annual filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

However, in a blog post before the filing, Tesla called the suit misguided and said the agency “has never once raised any concern” about its workplace practices following a three-year investigation.

The posting said the lawsuit appears to focus on accusations by production associates at the factory, who said misconduct took place between 2015 and 2019. The post also said it will ask the court to “pause the case and take other steps to ensure that facts and evidence will be heard.”

“Attacking a company like Tesla that has done so much good for California should not be the overriding aim of a state agency with prosecutorial authority,” the blog said.

Last October, a San Francisco jury awarded nearly $137 million to a Black contract worker who said that he faced “daily racist epithets,” including the “N-word,” at the plant in 2015 and 2016 before quitting.

Owen Diaz said employees drew swastikas and left racist graffiti and drawings around the plant and that supervisors failed to stop the abuse.

Tesla is appealing that verdict and has denied any knowledge of racist conduct that Diaz said took place at the plant, which has about 10,000 workers.

Tesla’s blog post said it “has always disciplined and terminated employees who engage in misconduct, including those who use racial slurs or harass others.”

In recent years, Tesla has been hit with numerous allegations by former workers of sexual harassment and racial discrimination at the Fremont plant. However, many don’t reach the courts because Tesla requires its full-time employees to agree to private arbitration of employment-related disputes.

Missouri
Judge won’t readmit 4 students involved in slavery petition
RIVERSIDE, Mo. (AP) — A federal judge declined to lift the expulsion or suspensions handed out to four suburban Kansas City high school students who were disciplined for their involvement in an online petition to “start slavery again.”

U.S. District Judge Stephen R. Bough acknowledged in his ruling Tuesday that the four students from Park Hill South High School will likely suffer harm if they aren’t allowed to return to the school immediately or ever, in one student’s case. But he said their lawsuit was unlikely to succeed on the merits of its claims if the case went to trial, radio station KCUR reported.

The four ninth-graders sued the Park Hill school district and several administrators after one was expelled and three others were suspended for 180 days over the online petition.

A district spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment and it wasn’t clear when the suspended students would be allowed to return to school.

They were on a bus with the freshman football team last September when one of them drafted a petition on Change.org titled “Start Slavery again” as he was joking with a Black student about jobs and slaves.

The student, who is biracial, later shared the petition on the football team’s Snapchat group. The three other students all commented favorably on the petition.

Other students reported the petition to school administrators. During an internal investigation, the students admitted their involvement but said the petition was a joke.

In their lawsuit, the students said their First Amendment and due process rights were violated. They contended that racial slurs were common at Park Hill South, “most often in friendly bantering,” and that the instigator of the conversation is Black and was not disciplined.

The students asked to be reinstated and to have the discipline expunged from their school records.

Arthur Benson, the students’ lawyer, said the incident resulted from “youthful bad judgment” that originated among Black and biracial students.

“Three whites boys in similar bad judgment wanted in on the joke, intended only for the freshman players,” Benson said in an email. “This bad judgment was punished as heinous acts that no one now still claims them to be.”

In his order, Bough said that public interest weighed in favor of denying them reinstatement.

He noted that the incident garnered national attention and prompted some parents and teachers to express concern about students’ safety.

Although Bough said the 14- and 15-year-old boys didn’t intend the petition to be circulated beyond the team, the petition caused “substantial disruption” at the high school and in the district that justified the discipline.

Benson said he had not yet decided whether to appeal the ruling.

Maine
Hospital ordered to pay $200K in wage discrimination lawsuit
BANGOR, Maine (AP) — A female psychologist who sued because she was underpaid compared to her male colleagues is owed more than $200,000, a federal judge ruled.

A judge this week ordered triple the lost wages to be paid to Dr. Clare Mundell after concluding Acadia Hospital violated the Maine Equal Pay Act, according to Portland law firm Johnson, Webbert & Garvan LLP.

Mundell contended her hourly rate was $50 an hour at Acadia Hospital while several two men made $90 and $95 respectively.

Northern Light, Acadia’s owner, said the company intends to appeal. “Northern Light Health is committed to treating all of its employees, regardless of gender, or any other protected class, fairly and equitably as it works to provide top-quality care to the people of Maine, especially during this pandemic,” spokesperson Suzanne Spruce said in a statement.

There are broad implications. In his ruling, U.S. District Judge said his decision “will require employers to track compensation differentials” and to articulate an authorized reason for such pay disparity.

Mundell, who was hired in 2017, said she brought her concerns to management after learning of the pay discrepancies. The hospital acknowledged there were disparities, she said, but declined to acknowledge they were based on gender. She resigned in 2020, and sued in 2021.