Tesla must pay a Black former Tesla worker about $3.2 million, most of it in punitive damages, after a judge in the racism-based case threw out an earlier jury award of $137 million.
On Monday, a jury awarded Owen Diaz $3 million in punitive damages, plus $175,000 in non-economic damages, according to the verdict form released by the court.
Diaz alleged in a 2017 lawsuit against Tesla that as a contracted elevator operator at the firm’s electric car factory in Fremont in 2015 and 2016, he endured “daily racist epithets,” including the n-word, and that colleagues drew swastikas and left racist graffiti and drawings around the plant.
In October 2021, a San Francisco federal court jury awarded Diaz nearly $137 million — believed to be one of the largest awards in U.S. history for a single plaintiff in a race-discrimination case. But in April last year, Judge William Orrick in U.S. District Court in San Francisco slashed the amount to $15 million. He gave Diaz the option of a retrial if he did not accept the reduced amount. Orrick said there was ample “disturbing” evidence for the jury’s finding against Tesla, but that he was bound by legal principles to cut the jury’s massive award. Diaz last June rejected the lower amount and the new trial started March 27.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday’s verdict and allegations of racism in its facilities.
A lawyer for the company, Alex Spiro, told the jury in Diaz’s trial last week that the case was not about whether “we think everything that happened at the Fremont factory of Tesla was defensible or right. It was not. There’s no excuse.” Spiro added that the case was also not about “harassment generally or the problems of this country or the history of the world and what we all ought to spend more time doing to make it better.”
Diaz’s lawsuit is one of several to allege widespread racism at Tesla’s facilities. Early last year, California’s civil rights regulator, the Department of Fair Employment and Housing, sued Tesla, alleging Black workers at the company’s Fremont facility were paid less than White workers, denied advancements, and faced daily racist abuse, including a noose drawn in a bathroom next to a reference to lynching and a racial slur. Tesla has called the lawsuit, in Alameda County Superior Court, “misguided” and “unfair.”
Tesla, headquartered in Palo Alto until moving its base to Texas in late 2021, revealed in a court filing last year that it is under investigation by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Last April, a female Tesla worker at the Fremont factory, Raina Pierce, sued the firm led by CEO Elon Musk in Alameda County Superior Court, claiming a plant manager would greet employees with statements including, “welcome to the plantation,” and “welcome to the slave house,” and that the n-word was scrawled all over the inside of the facility.
Also last year, Kaylen Barker, a Black worker at a Tesla parts factory in Lathrop, claimed in a lawsuit in Alameda County Superior Court that a White co-worker called her the n-word and assaulted her. According to the suit, Tesla fired her assailant but then rehired her about two weeks later.
The following month, a Black former quality manager for Tesla alleged in a lawsuit filed in the same court that White co-workers who knew he had been traumatized by serious blast injuries he received as a military contractor in Afghanistan tormented him with ringtones set to sound like incoming-rocket warnings, among other race-based abuses. Marcellous Cage claimed Tesla fired him for racist reasons and because he reported life-threatening safety violations in the plant.
In late 2021, Jessica Barraza, a Fremont factory worker, claimed in a lawsuit in that court that she and other female workers at the facility were subjected to “a pervasive culture of sexual harassment,” which included “a daily barrage of sexist language and behavior” along with “frequent groping on the factory floor.”
In 2017, Marcus Vaughn, a former assembly worker in Fremont, alleged in a lawsuit filed in Alameda County Superior Court that the plant was a “hotbed for racist behavior.” Tesla said in a blog post its investigation identified “disappointing behavior” involving “a number of conflicting accusations and counter-accusations between several African-American and Hispanic individuals, alleging use of racial language” and that it fired three people.
Musk, in a 2017 email to employees that was revealed in Vaughn’s lawsuit, told workers not to be “a huge jerk” to people from “less represented” groups. Musk added that if a “jerk” sincerely apologizes, “it is important to be thick-skinned and accept that apology.”
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