A female engineer from India has brought a discrimination lawsuit against Apple over the fact that her two managers have been treating her like a subservient despite having positive performance evaluations and significant team contributions.
Anita Nariani Schulze was forced to resign from her job as a technical engineer at Apple in 2019 after enduring years of biased treatment by her senior and direct managers. Schulze’s case in the California state court is the latest to allege workplace bias in Silicon Valley that occurs because of the prevalent cultural prejudices of tech workers from South Asia.
Indian Engineer alleges workplace bias and files discriminatory lawsuit against Apple
Schulze is part of the Sindhi Hindu, a minority, with ancestry in Pakistan’s Sindh region. As per her complaint, Schulze alleges that her senior and direct managers have repeatedly excluded from meetings while summoning her male counterparts, micromanaged her work, stripped her of bonuses, and scrutinized her.
Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Suni R. Kulkarni rejected the Cupertino tech giant’s request to toss out the suit in a tentative ruling on Wednesday. Kulkarni stated that Schulze had adequately supported her legal claims. Apple’s counsel argued that her claims were based on stereotypes and were not specific enough.
Kulkarni, however, also rejected Schulze’s request to represent a class of female company employees that suffered the same behavior in the last four years. According to Kulkarni, this case did not establish or prove a pattern of discrimination that could then be applied to a broader group. From the court’s docket, it is not clear if the judge will hold a hearing on Thursday before making a final ruling.
Recently, the Cupertino tech giant filed a lawsuit against a former employee for allegedly leaking information about hardware products, future plans, and such. On the Epic v Apple front, the judge orders a seven-hour deposition of the tech giant’s CEO, Tim Cook.
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