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Tesla wants to pause a federal agency\u2019s lawsuit against the automaker for racial bias against its Black workers at its Fremont assembly plant.<\/p>\n
The electric vehicle maker, in a filing in San Francisco federal court Monday, accused the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) of rushing to file a lawsuit in September<\/a> against Tesla as part of a \u201ctoxic interagency competition\u201d with a California civil rights agency that sued the automaker<\/a> for similar reasons last year.<\/p>\n The EEOC\u2019s lawsuit alleges that Tesla violated federal law by tolerating widespread and ongoing racial harassment of its Black employees and subjecting some workers to retaliation for opposing harassment. The EEOC\u2019s filing details accounts from Black workers enduring casual use of slurs and epithets such as variations of the N-word, \u201cmonkey,\u201d \u201cboy\u201d and \u201cblack bitch,\u201d as well as racist graffiti calling for violence against Black people, among other forms of abuse.<\/p>\n The California Civil Rights Department\u2019s claims against Tesla include similar examples of harassment from Black workers.<\/p>\n Both cases are in state court and claim that Tesla violated California\u2019s anti-discrimination laws. The EEOC\u2019s lawsuit includes a claim that Tesla also broke a federal law banning workplace race discrimination and harassment.<\/p>\n Tesla also faces a proposed class action that alleges racial harassment filed by workers in 2017.<\/p>\n The EEOC did not immediately respond to TechCrunch\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n Tesla\u2019s filing on Monday says the federal court should decline to open a third lawsuit until the existing cases are resolved. The automaker\u2019s lawyers argued that prosecuting three cases simultaneously will involve \u201csubstantial duplication of effort,\u201d create a risk of \u201cinconsistent court rulings\u201d and waste judicial resources.<\/p>\n Tesla is calling on something referred to as the Colorado River abstention doctrine here, which is a legal principle that would allow a federal court to abstain from hearing a case if there\u2019s a parallel proceeding happening in state court that covers the same issues. The goal behind the doctrine is to avoid duplicate litigation and boost more efficient justice.<\/p>\n The turf war Tesla refers to in its filing is between the EEOC and the California Civil Rights Department (CRD), formerly the Department of Fair Employment and Housing. The filing claims that, historically, the EEOC and CRD have worked together so that entities wouldn\u2019t be subject to the same litigation from the two agencies.<\/p>\n \u201cWith each agency increasingly eager to file headline-grabbing complaints and report multimillion dollar settlements, their historical coordination and cooperation collapsed,\u201d the filing states.<\/p>\n Tesla has repeatedly denied wrongdoing in its multiple cases of racial discrimination. In its filing Monday, it refers to the allegations as \u201cfalse\u201d and accuses the EEOC of \u201chastily wrap[ping] up its sham pre-suit investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n The company is also appealing a $3.2 million award<\/a> granted to a Black former contractor at the Fremont plant in a separate race bias lawsuit.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n