Google has agreed to pay $50 million to settle a lawsuit that claimed the company showed ongoing racial bias against Black employees.
A proposed settlement was filed Thursday evening in a federal court in Oakland, California. It covers more than 4,000 Google employees in California and New York and still needs a judge’s approval.
The people who filed the lawsuit said Google has a company culture that is unfair to Black employees. They claim that managers give Black workers lower-level jobs, pay them less give them poor performance reviews, and hold them back from getting promoted.
The complaint said that in 2021, only 4.4% of Google’s workers and just 3% of its leaders were Black.
The plaintiff April Curley, hired to expand outreach to historically black colleges, said Google denied her promotions, stereotyped her as an “angry” black woman, and fired her after six years as she prepared a report on its alleged racial bias.
Managers also reportedly criticized Black employees by saying they weren’t “oogley” enough or didn’t have “Googleyness.” The people who filed the lawsuit said these were subtle, racially biased comments.
Google, which is part of Alphabet and based in Mountain View, California, said it did nothing wrong but agreed to settle the case. The company also said it followed all the laws.
“We strongly disagree with the allegations that we treated anyone improperly and we remain committed to paying, hiring and leveling all employees consistently,” Google spokeswoman Courtenay Mencini said in an emailed statement on Friday.
The lawsuit started in March 2022 after a government agency, now called the California Civil Rights Department, began looking into how Google treated Black female employees.
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