After a Second Google Suit, Time to Re-Examine Policies Around Internal Forums?
The follow up to James Damore's suit against Google may prompt legal departments to take a close look at how they deal with speech on internal company message boards.
February 26, 2018 at 05:29 PM
5 minute read
The original version of this story was published on The Recorder
The saga of former Google engineer James Damore, who was fired in August 2017 for his memo which argued, in part, that women were less biologically suited for tech jobs than men, led to another lawsuit last week. But unlike Damore's recent class action complaint, claiming Google discriminated against conservative, white men, the new complaint alleges Google discriminated and retaliated against liberals.
While the two suits are ideologically at odds, they've also got something in common — both sprouted from heated political discussions on the company's internal messaging boards. Legal departments should take note and re-examine the structures currently in place for their companies' internal communication platforms, attorneys said.
“The more you offer forums like this the more [employees] are tempted to speak their minds about anything and not realize until it's too late that it may have some consequences,” said Robin Shea, a partner at Constangy, Brooks, Smith & Prophete. “I'm really not in favor of message boards at all, but if they are going to exist there ought to be some pretty clear cut rules about what types of communication are off limits.”
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