California Judge Approves Class Action Against Tesla Over Racial Harassment

A judge in California has allowed thousands of Tesla employees to proceed with a class-action racial discrimination lawsuit against the carmaker.

Former Tesla assembly line worker Marcus Vaughn first sued Tesla in 2017, claiming that Black workers were subjected to different racist conduct, “including regularly being called racial slurs by co-workers and supervisors,” his lawsuit alleged. Additionally, Vaughn claims Black employees were subjected to racist graffiti and had nooses hung at their workstations.

On Wednesday, Judge Noël Wise approved the class-action lawsuit representing nearly 6,000 workers, asserting that Tesla has an alleged “pattern or practice” of inadequately preventing racial discrimination.” Tesla has tried to arbitrate the issue internally, pushing for it in both 2021 and in January last year.

Tesla says it does not tolerate workplace harassment and claims to have fired employees who have engaged in racial harassment. Wise wants to hold the trial at around the same time she will also preside over a separate trial against Tesla by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Reuters reports.

Read: Black Ex-Tesla Employee Payout Reduced To $3.2M After Rejecting $15M In Racial Bias Case

In 2017, Tesla chief executive Elon Musk sent an email to workers saying those from a less represented group don’t get a free pass to be jerks.

“If someone is a jerk to you, but sincerely apologizes, it is important to be thick-skinned and accept that apology,” he wrote. “If you are a part of a less represented group, you don’t get a free pass on being a jerk yourself. We have had a few cases at Tesla where someone in a less represented group was actually given a job or promoted over more qualified highly represented candidates and then decided to sue Tesla for millions of dollars because they felt they weren’t promoted enough. That is obviously not cool.”