[A photo shows a laptop which opened the Google website, Photo Credit to Pixabay]

Google has agreed to pay $28 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that accused the company of favoring white and Asian workers,  who were found to have received higher pay and greater opportunities for professional advancement. 

The class action, preliminarily approved by Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Charles Adams, comprises at least 6,632 California workers who labored at Google from February 15, 2018 to December 31, 2024.

The complaint was  brought by Ana Cantu, a  former Google employee who identifies as Mexican and racially Native American, on behalf of Hispanic, Latinx, Native American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and Alaska Native employees.

Cantu alleged that despite her outstanding performance on Google Cloud and operations teams for seven years, she remained in the same job grade, while her White peers and Asian colleagues received career promotions and higher payment. 

She further claimed that Google assigned higher-grade jobs to white and Asian employees, even when they performed the same work and withheld promotions. 

The suit accused Google of violating the California Equal Pay Act, alleging the company perpetuated system-wide pay and career disparities. 

Google has denied the allegations with spokesman Courtenay Mencini declaring, “We still don’t agree that we treated anyone differentially and remain committed to fairly paying, fairly hiring, and fairly levelling all employees.”

The lawsuit also revised its possible class, with the lawyer for Cantu agreeing to exclude Black employees from the complaint last month, a change Google has requested. 

After deducting legal fees and associated costs, the remaining compensation will be given to class members and the amount is estimated to be $20.4 million.

Judge Charles Adams has scheduled a hearing on September 11 to grant the final approval on the settlement. 

The lawsuit fuels broader concerns about diversity and fairness in the Valley, adding to the ongoing scrutiny regarding its employment and pay practices, especially on minorities and underrepresented groups. 

The government reports and civil rights organizations emphasized that Latinx or Black employees’ underrepresentation should be observed in technical and leadership roles as well. 

As a result, the new suit is planning to observe the imbalances that have taken place in reward programs and promotion opportunities: the company’s observation and actions will maintain the industry’s diversity and inclusion.

The lawsuit claims that now it is time for technology companies to show a real change; there have been constant years that change is going to take place when it did not.  

Now that the settlement has been pending final approval, Google’s diversity issues management will likely remain under scrutiny, and business observers expect this case to influence corporate pay equity and professional growth policy more broadly. 

As the issue of workplace fairness resurfaces, the case remains a grim reminder that efforts towards ending promotion and pay discrimination are a constant struggle in the technology field. 

Similarly, in 2017, Google faced internal turbulence when an employee claimed that there had been gender discrimination within the company, leading to widespread backlash.

Google has previously faced lawsuits  regarding over gender pay disparities, with female employees complaining that they had consistently received lower pay than their male colleagues for equal work. 

Again, in 2022, the company settled a class action lawsuit by nearly 15,500 women for $118 million that had charged Google with underpaying women less than men with identical titles.