Lawyers for Google Inc. argue a class action that accuses the company of pay discrimination casts too wide a net with overbroad claims of alleged gender inequities and unfair promotion opportunities for women.

Google's attorneys at Paul Hastings are asking a San Francisco judge not to certify the would-be class in Ellis v. Google and to dismiss the complaint. The lawsuit, filed in September in Superior Court, accuses the Mountain View-based company of paying women at all levels less than men in comparable positions and assigning women lower-tier jobs.

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The case is moving forward amid wider scrutiny of the technology industry, including a federal investigation into Google itself, and broad questions about whether Silicon Valley companies have created barriers for female employees. A Google engineer made headlines this summer when he wrote a widely shared memo suggesting, in part, that women were not biologically suited for the tech industry.

Google's attorneys called the class claims “generic” and said the number of would-be class members was “a moving target.”

“The class spans Google's entire California workforce, top to bottom,” the attorneys wrote in court documents made available on Monday. “The plaintiff complaint makes clear they seek to compare women to men in entirely different positions, at different levels, in different ladders and departments. They do not identify which titles, levels, or ladders they seek to compare, let alone provide a factual basis for why they contend employees in completely different positions and departments perform substantially similar or equal work.”

The lawsuit was built on an investigation by the Labor Department's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs. The department's initial findings alleged pay discrimination among the 21,000 employees at the company's headquarters at every level.

A Google spokeswoman in September said the company has “extensive systems in place to ensure that we pay fairly.” The company has also disputed the Labor Department's findings.

The purported class of former and current employees is represented by the law firms Altshuler Berzon and Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of three former Google employees, Kelly Ellis, Holly Pease and Kelli Wisuri, who said they believe they received fewer opportunities and less pay than their male counterparts.

“While Google has been an industry-leading tech innovator, its treatment of female employees has not entered the 21st century,” Kelly Dermody of Lieff Cabraser said at the time the lawsuit was filed. “This case seeks to ensure fairness for women at Google.”

Google argued that the plaintiffs' approach is “infeasible, inherently unmanageable and unfair” to the company. The attorneys argued that compensation decisions are quintessentially the type of individual decisions that do not provide a basis for a class action. Google argued that with tens of thousands of Google employees working at different locations, in different departments with different qualifications, the claims in the lawsuit are amorphous.

The attorneys for the former Google employees cited the Labor Department's investigation in making their case against the company. An administrative law judge earlier denied the agency's request for broad discovery in that investigation.

Google argued in its court papers that the Labor Department investigation is insufficient to prove plaintiffs' claims. The agency's findings at the company's headquarters, Google's attorneys argued, would be only a subset of the class sought in the lawsuit.

“Only in Alice's looking-glass world could an adjudication that broad discovery is not warranted be used to allow plaintiffs to initiate a class action to obtain even broader discovery here,” Google's attorneys said.

Google's reply motion to strike class allegations is posted below:

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