Discriminated against for being a white, male, conservative??

James Damore is back in the headlines today.  In case it slipped your mind, he's the guy who wrote the memo formally titled "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber."  In it he accused his then employer Google of silencing conservative opinions and he claimed that it may be biological differences that are the cause of the shortage of women in tech.  He was fired by Google in August of 2017.

Now he has filed a lawsuit against Google alleging that they discriminate against white male conservatives.  He is seeking to make it a class-action lawsuit.  The timing is interesting considering that Google is being accused by the Justice Department of systematically paying women less than men.

Let's review.

An employer cannot discriminate against someone for their race.
An employer cannot discriminate against someone for their gender.

If Google is discriminating against all whites, or all males, or all males, then he might have an argument.  But his accusation is that Google is discriminating only against those white males who have a specific political perspective.

Is that a valid cause of action?  It might well be, even though it doesn't seem so at first glance.  California law says:

CHAPTER 5. Political Affiliations [1101 - 1106]  ( Chapter 5 enacted by Stats. 1937, Ch. 90. )  

1101.  

No employer shall make, adopt, or enforce any rule, regulation, or policy:

(a) Forbidding or preventing employees from engaging or participating in politics or from becoming candidates for public office.

(b) Controlling or directing, or tending to control or direct the political activities or affiliations of employees.

(Enacted by Stats. 1937, Ch. 90.)

He may or may not have a case because of this law.

When I read this story I thought back to December of 1987.  I went and interviewed for a job at Crossroads School.  I met with the Director of Financial Affairs first, and then her boss, the Head of the School came in and joined us for a few minutes.  I wound up getting the job.

What I did not know until several years later is that they had a discussion about not hiring me because at the time I was a Republican.  My soon-to-be boss had made a successful argument that if the school believed in its own philosophy, it would have been wrong to exclude me because of my political views.  Years later, the Head of School told me that he felt that giving in to that argument was one of the best decisions he'd ever made.  It was nice to hear.

So is it wrong for Google to have chosen to fire James Damore?  I do not believe it was.  He wasn't terminated solely for his beliefs.  He was let go for violating the company's Code of Conduct.  There is a difference.  Does Google discriminate against conservatives?  I don't know.  But if I were an employer and one of my employees tried to argue that women are less capable of men than doing a job based solely on biology, I'd probably find it offensive enough to reconsider employing that person.