The verdict is in and it’s conveying a terrible message. On Monday, a federal jury in San Francisco ordered Tesla Inc to pay Owen Diaz, a former Black employee, $3.2 million in damages after he won a racial harassment suit against the company.
In 2021, a federal jury awarded Diaz, $137 million in damages after he won his racial harassment lawsuit against the car company. However, U.S. District Judge William Orrick found the amount excessive and later reduced the award to $15 million. Following this decision, both Diaz and Tesla filed motions for a retrial.
The suit was filed as Diaz accused Tesla of failing to heed his complaints of workers telling him to “go back to Africa ” using racist slurs and scrawling swastikas, caricatures and epithets on walls and work areas. The jury ultimately awarded him $175,000 for emotional distress and $3.2 million in punitive damages – designed to punish unlawful conduct and prevent it from happening again – despite CEO Elon Musk saying in a tweet that “the verdict would’ve been zero” if Tesla were allowed to introduce new evidence during the retrial.
Receiving an award of $3.2 million may appear to be a triumph, but it is, in fact, disrespectful. Tesla’s handling of Diaz’s complaints was unacceptable, and the judge should have upheld the jury’s decision for a larger payout. 3.2 million dollars might be a hefty sum, but it does not make up for the trauma and distress that Diaz was subjected and is chump-change to a company like Telsa. This tiny payout sends the message that this kind of behavior is not taken seriously. It’s a slap on the wrist, and not enough to adequately send a signal to other companies that they need to do better in protecting their employees from discrimination.
Diaz’s case is one of many examples of the racism and discrimination still plaguing American workplaces today, and it’s clear that more needs to be done to protect workers from suffering the same fate.
