Tesla settles racial discrimination lawsuit

electric car manufacturer Tesla A racial discrimination lawsuit has been settled after a federal jury awarded $3.2 million in 2015 to Owen Diaz, a Black man who worked as an elevator operator at the Fremont, Calif., factory.

Attorney Lawrence Organ of the California Civil Rights Law Group representing Diaz told CNBC via email: “The parties have reached an amicable resolution to the dispute. The terms of the settlement are confidential and we will have no further comment.”

The company filed a proposed class action lawsuit, Marcus Vaughn v. Tesla Inc., on behalf of current and former Tesla employees, alleging the automaker’s ongoing racist discrimination and harassment of black workers. Diaz is not involved in the lawsuit.

“It would take a tremendous amount of courage for Owen Diaz to stand up to a company of Tesla’s size,” Organ told CNBC by phone on Friday. “Civil rights laws only work when people are willing to take these kinds of risks.” Despite his lawsuit Chapter life has ended and Tesla still has a lot of work to do.”

He said: “When I started this case, I suggested that if Elon Musk made a statement and promised employees that this behavior would not be tolerated, then this behavior would stop. We have not heard that after seven years Nine years of litigation came to an end after a lawsuit of one figure, then a seven-figure verdict. Why doesn’t he stop this behavior? This doesn’t make sense to me. Tesla should be the factory of the future. But this behavior comes from a segregated past. “

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission also sued Tesla, accusing the automaker of violating federal law by “tolerating widespread and persistent racial harassment of its Black employees and subjecting some of those workers to retaliation for speaking out against the harassment.”

Tesla called EECO’s allegations “a false narrative that ignores Tesla’s record on equal employment opportunity.”

As CNBC previously reported, Diaz testified in San Francisco federal court in 2023 that his co-workers at Tesla frequently used racist epithets to slander him and other Black workers, made him feel physically unsafe at the factory, and Telling him to “go back to Africa” ​​and leaving racist graffiti in the bathroom.

Diaz said his Tesla co-worker also left a racist drawing on his workspace. The painting is a basic reference to the 1950s cartoon “Inki the Caveman,” which featured a black boy with big lips, a loincloth, earrings, and a bone in his hair.

During the trial, Diaz recalled that he encouraged his son to work at Tesla but later regretted it because his son was also exposed to a racially hostile workplace.

In his first trial, the jury Diaz was awarded the award after Diaz and his attorneys convinced the jury that he suffered severe racial discrimination and that the company failed to take all reasonable steps to end and prevent that and further civil rights violations. The larger verdict, including punitive damages, was $137 million.

as NBC News recently reportedThis month, Musk shared unsubstantiated claims of cannibalism in Haiti on X and shared posts smearing Haitian immigrants as possible cannibals.

Progressive News Organization Mother Jones also reported “The tech billionaire has been retweeting followers of prominent racial scientists on his platform” and “spreading misinformation about the intelligence and physiology of minorities.”

Tesla, which does not have a traditional public relations office in North America, did not respond to a request for comment.