California regulator sues Tesla, alleging racial discrimination at its Fremont Factory

• The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing sued Tesla over racial discrimination allegations.
• The regulator said it received "hundreds of complaints from workers," following a three-year investigation.

A California civil rights regulator said it is suing Tesla, accusing it of racial discrimination and harassment at the electric carmaker's Fremont, California factory.

The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) said it filed the lawsuit in Alameda County Superior Court on Wednesday. The suit comes only a few days after Tesla revealed in a financial filing that the state agency had warned it had grounds for a civil complaint, following a three-year investigation into the work culture at Tesla's Fremont Factory.

The state department told The Wall Street Journal that it had received "hundreds of complaints from workers" at the factory that employs over 10,000 people.

"DFEH found evidence that Tesla's Fremont factory is a racially segregated workplace where Black workers are subjected to racial slurs and discriminated against in job assignments, discipline, pay, and promotion creating a hostile work environment," Kevin Kish, the agency's director, said in a statement to The Journal.

The state regulator told The Journal that one Black worker reported hearing racial slurs as much as 50 to 100 times per day and that Black workers said they often heard supervisors use racist slurs. They also reported instances of racist graffiti at Tesla's Fremont Factory and said they were subjected to more demanding roles, as well as passed over for promotions, according to the report.

Tesla and its CEO, Elon Musk, did not respond to a request for comment from Insider, but addressed the lawsuit in a blog post. The company called the lawsuit "unfair and counterproductive" and said it opposes discrimination and harassment in its workplace.

"Attacking a company like Tesla that has done so much good for California should not be the overriding aim of a state agency with prosecutorial authority," the company said in its post.

The electric carmaker has faced a flurry of lawsuits in recent months. In December, eight women sued Tesla, alleging they were sexually harassed at the company.

Last October, a former Tesla employee was awarded $137 million in damages for allegations Tesla did not prevent him from being racially harassed at the Fremont Factory. The carmaker is in the process of challenging the verdict. It says the award "bears no relationship to the actual evidence at trial."

In a recent interview with Bloomberg, his attorney, Lawrence Organ, compared Tesla's Fremont Factory to a "plantation." Organ told Insider over 950 Black worker have reached out to him with racial discrimination and harassment claims against Tesla.

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