Judge denies tech giant’s attempts to reduce size of proposed class in case over discrimination in salary and promotions for women
As reported in the Recorder (subscription) and the California Daily Journal (subscription), on Tuesday March 27th Judge Mary E. Wiss of the Superior Court of California issued an order permitting the pay equity class ation to proceed against Google. Judge Wiss found that plaintiffs’ classwide allegations were sufficient to survive Google’s attempts to have them stricken from the class action complaint.
The tech giant had tried to get the court to remove from the litigation two of the six employment positions listed in the complaint, without success. The lawsuit will now proceed on behalf of as many as 5,000 female employees at Google across 30 different jobs that include management, engineering, and sales.
“We were pleased to get the order itself but the judge’s analysis is a very helpful explication of the types of evidence the courts are looking for when upholding claims like this under the amended Equal Pay Act,” stated Lieff Cabraser partner Kelly M. Dermody, co-counsel for the plaintiffs.
Dermody noted that while the suit is not the first of its kind, it is one of the earliest. “We’re not breaking totally new ground here,” Dermody added. “We are in the early adopters in looking at [Cal. Labor Code AB358, which expands the scope of “substantially similar work”] as a real benefit to employees to attack a pernicious practice where women have been paid less than men for the same work.”
Learn more about the Google gender lawsuit at GoogleGenderCase.com.
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