Tesla in a new court filing has cast doubt on the extent of racism at its Fremont, California, factory and whether a Black former worker suffered racism-based distress, the latest long-running lawsuit alleging that attitudes at the plant recalled the “Jim Crow era” in U.S. history.
Former Tesla contractor Owen Diaz, a Black man who worked as an elevator operator in the electric car plant in 2015 and 2016, claimed in his 2017 lawsuit that he and other Black workers were called racial slurs on a daily basis, that he was told to “go back to Africa” and that he was subjected to “vitriolic racial harassment.” The court further heard Diaz found swastikas and racist graffiti including “death to all (n-words)” on walls in the plant.
Last year, a jury awarded Diaz $137 million, but in April, Judge William Orrick in U.S. District Court in San Francisco slashed the amount to $15 million. Orrick said he was bound by precedent to reduce the award but said the jury had ample reason to believe Diaz suffered severe emotional harm. Orrick noted that “supervisors even joined in on the abuse, one going so far as to threaten Diaz and draw a racist caricature near his workstation.”
