>In October 2021, a jury awarded him $137 million in damages in the case, but a federal judge threw out that award as excessive. US District Judge William Orrick offered Diaz $15 million in damages in the case instead, but Diaz rejected the offer, choosing instead to have a new trial.
I'm guessing you are not familiar with the case and only read the CNN coverage.
Employers have responsibilities to maintain certain standards at a workplace. Tesla absolutely flaunted those standards to a ridiculous degree. The first jury on the case awarded over $100 million to the plaintiff.
Go look at the evidence presented in the trial. It's not one bad word being used once.
I'd argue it's a first amendment violation for the state to require an employee be fired or reprimanded for saying/writing mean words; but that's not to say there wasn't more to it than that.
The civil rights act itself is a slap in the face of the 10th amendment and should be repealed post haste.
A jury decided otherwise regarding the correctness of punitive damages.
Once that was decided, such damages don't scale by damage done; they scale by a figure that would inconvenience the company so as to discourage such flouting of their legally-mandated corporate responsibility in the future.
> The case was brought by Owen Diaz, who worked as an elevator operator at the plant. He reported he regularly heard racial slurs, including the N-word, on the Fremont factory floor, and saw racist graffiti in bathrooms and a racially insensitive cartoon.
Why misrepresent something when the truth is only a click away?
But besides that, everyone here knows that you know that the value isn't about damages suffered per se, it's about sending a message to racist people like you.
Do you think racism in the work place is ok? How about sexism? Why not homophobia as well? Does smacking the butt of your female coworker really deserve compensation? Where do you draw the line or do you think it should all be ok in the workplace?
Protected classes exist. Libel and slander laws exist. Hate crime law exist. In every single one of those, someone is being "mean" to the other party.
Many of those laws are written in blood, since being "mean" to someone based on traits they're born with and suffering no consequences leads to people being even more "mean".
Frankly, you cannot see past the tip of your nose. Don't comment on how the law is applied.
If nobody sued against discrimination, then discrimination laws would be useless. So fighting discrimination is a public good that we all benefit from. Fighting a lawsuit is hard, especially doing it for almost a whole decade, and against a multi billion dollar corporation.
Should the guy get $10,000 for it? He's not getting paid $3 million, because somebody shouted a slur at him once.
