Photo: Jason Doiy/ALM

In the first test of Uber's newly announced policy to let sexual harassment and assault cases play out in public, a former Latina engineer sued the company claiming she faced discrimination based on her gender, ethnicity and disability.

Lawyers at Outten & Golden on Monday filed suit in San Francisco Superior Court on behalf of former Uber software engineer Ingrid Avendaño, who worked for the company from February 2014 to June 2017.

“Over her entire tenure at Uber, Avendaño saw and experienced a male-dominated work culture, permeated with degrading, marginalizing, discriminatory, and sexually harassing conduct towards women,” wrote Outten & Golden's Jennifer Schwartz and Menaka Fernando in Monday's 33-page complaint.

Avendaño claims she was hired at $100,000, a comparatively low salary compared with her male and white colleagues, and that she was promoted slower than similar-performing colleagues. She also claims that shortly after she started, she complained about inappropriate and discriminatory behavior by a male colleague at a recruiting event, but the complaint was ignored. The same employee later spread rumors that she had slept her way into the company, she claims.

Avendaño also claims that discriminatory behavior contributed to her physical and emotional problems, including panic attacks that she says proceeded to the point that she was vomiting at work.

“[E]ach time Avendaño raised concerns regarding unlawful conduct, she was met with Uber's entrenched disregard for the rights of its women employees and a refusal to take effective steps to prevent harassment,” her lawyers wrote. “Worse, she suffered blatant retaliation, including denial of promotions and raises, unwarranted negative performance reviews, and placement on an oppressively demanding on-call schedule that had detrimental effects on her health.”

Avendaño was among the initially named plaintiffs in a pay discrimination lawsuit against Uber, which the company ultimately settled for $10 million with a class of 420 minority and women engineers in March. According a press release announcing the lawsuit, Avendaño did not participate in the previously announced settlement.

In response to a request for comment on the lawsuit, an Uber spokeswoman said the company was “moving in a new direction.”

“Last week, we proactively announced changes to our arbitration policies,” she said. “And in the past year we have implemented a new salary and equity structure based on the market, overhauled our performance review process, published Diversity & Inclusion reports, and created and delivered diversity and leadership trainings to thousands of employees globally.”