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Tesla Goes Public About California's DFEH Lawsuit in Threatening Tone

It is not very often that Tesla goes public about anything. When it does, that usually has to do with bad news for the company. This must be the first case in which Tesla anticipated the bad news: the EV maker talked about a lawsuit yet to be filed due to “systematic racial discrimination and harassment.”
Tesla Fremont 10 photos
Photo: Tesla
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As Tesla warned in its blog, the California DFEH (Department of Fair Employment and Housing) intends to file a lawsuit based on those allegations. The company recognizes that the DFEH is doing that after three years of investigation. Despite that, Tesla qualified the case as misguided. In its blog post, it not only tries to explain why. It also makes that in a threatening way.

Reminding its readers that Tesla is “the last remaining automobile manufacturer in California,” the company claimed to offer “the best(-)paying jobs in the automotive industry to over 30,000 Californians.” It reinforced the menacing tone by mentioning that DFEH is doing that “when manufacturing jobs are leaving California.

Elon Musk already changed Tesla’s headquarters to Texas, where Giga Austin may soon start to deliver its first vehicles. At least that’s what the Tesla CEO promised that would happen at the company’s latest earnings call. However, he also said the EV maker would sell “self-driving” cars in 2015, so you may want to take that with a grain of salt. Tesla would not dare to close Fremont while the Texan plant is not fully operational. However, it may do so in the long term.

According to the blog post, “no company has done more for sustainability or the creation of clean energy jobs than Tesla.” The EV maker just forgot to mention the 33 air quality violations it had to settle in May 2021 by paying $1 million – $750,000 if it builds a solar roof for poor communities in the area.

The EV maker then alleges that the DFEH has been asked “on almost 50 occasions by individuals who believe they were discriminated against or harassed to investigate Tesla.” According to the company, the DFEH would not have reached “a finding of misconduct against Tesla” in any of these cases. We’ll ask the department if that is correct.

Tesla then accuses the future lawsuit of being “a narrative spun by the DFEH and a handful of plaintiff firms to generate publicity.” It also said it would ask the court to pause the case “to ensure that facts and evidence will be heard.” What the EV maker wants is full access to “the specific allegations or the factual bases for its lawsuit.” Again, Tesla seems to miss that this access is ensured in court, not before the case starts.

Tesla has been accused of allowing racial discrimination to happen in Fremont multiple times. It already lost two lawsuits related to that, including one that had the highest punitive damage award ever granted for racial reasons: $130 million. Valerie Capers Workman, the company’s Vice President of People, left the company in January 2022. If that is a foreword for the DFEH lawsuit, things are not looking good for the EV maker.
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About the author: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo
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Motoring writer since 1998, Gustavo wants to write relevant stories about cars and their shift to a sustainable future.
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