Tesla reached a racial discrimination settlement with a black employee

Following a California judge’s ruling that ordered staff in California to sue Tesla over concerns about racism at its factories, Tesla reached a settlement in a racial discrimination case with Owen Diaz, a black man who worked as an elevator operator at Tesla’s factory in Fremont, California, plant in 2015.

According to reports, Diaz did previously awarded A federal jury awarded him $3.2 million. Diaz’s attorney, Lawrence Organ of the California Civil Rights Group, who represented Diaz in his lawsuit, told the outlet in an emailed statement: “The parties have reached an amicable resolution of their disputes. The terms of the settlement are confidential and we will have no further comment.”

According to , Organ spoke with them on March 15 and told the outlet: “Owen Diaz needed enormous courage to stand up to a company the size of Tesla. Civil rights laws only work if people are willing to take these kinds of risks. Even though the litigation chapter of his life is over, Tesla still has a lot of work to do.”

The authority continued: “When I started this case, I suggested that this conduct would cease if Elon Musk made a statement and commitment to his employees that it was not tolerated. We haven’t heard anything like this after seven years of legal proceedings, when the verdict was nine figures and then seven figures. Why doesn’t he stop this behavior? This is what doesn’t make sense to me. Tesla is supposed to be the factory of the future. But this behavior comes from the Jim Crow past.”

In addition to Diaz, it’s reported that there are 6,000 Tesla employees who also worked at the identical factory as Diaz. accusing the corporate of tolerating racial prejudice. There are also pending cases filed by California and U.S. anti-bias agencies, in addition to lawsuits involving individual employees. Tesla denies the allegations in all of those cases.

The automaker also faces a lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which accuses Tesla of “violating federal law by tolerating widespread and continuing racial harassment of its Black employees and subjecting some of those employees to retaliation for standing up to the harassment.”

Tesla responded by effectively calling the EEOC’s allegations “fake news,” arguing that the allegations were inconsistent with its track record. According to Tesla, the EEOC’s lawsuit perpetuates a “false narrative that ignores Tesla’s track record of equal employment opportunity.”

noted of their reports that Tesla doesn’t have a traditional public relations office in North America, which is complicated by the actions of its most contacted representative, CEO Elon Musk. Musk is critical of DEI, often sharing spreading misinformation on Twitter/X, which he also owns, and sharing racist pseudoscience in regards to the intelligence and physiology of racial minorities on that platform.

According to Tesla, it isn’t the one company Musk is associated with that’s facing legal complaints over his social media behavior. Space X, the spaceflight company he owns amid allegations that eight employees were fired after they criticized Musk’s posts on Twitter/X. In January 2024, the National Labor Relations Board filed a grievance after Space X employees fired nine employees who posted an open letter on the corporate’s internal chat in June 2022, and Space X fired eight of them. During its investigation, the NLRB discovered at the very least 37 labor law violations.

The letter reads partially: “Elon’s behavior in the public sphere has been a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment to us, particularly in recent weeks,” the letter reads. “As our CEO and most important spokesman, Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX – every tweet Elon sends is a de facto public statement from the company. It is very important to make clear to our teams and potential talent pool that his message does not reflect our work, our mission or our values.”