More than 6,000 current and former Latino, Indigenous and Pacific Islander employees of Google will receive about $3,000 each from the company after it settled a class-action lawsuit claiming it paid White and Asian workers more.
Ana Cantu, of Mexican and Indigenous heritage, was hired at Google in 2014 as head of a social media unit, quit the Mountain View digital-advertising giant in 2021 and sued it the same month.
Her department at Google was almost exclusively White, and she “continually asked what she needed to do” to receive a raise or promotion like her White colleagues, the lawsuit alleged, but, “no one at Google could provide an answer.”
Google agreed to pay $28 million to end the lawsuit. Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Charles Adams on March 12 certified the case as a class action and approved the settlement.
The payments to workers will cover affected employees who worked at Google in California from mid-February 2018 to the end of 2024. Legal fees and assorted costs and monetary distributions will make up the rest of the $28 million.
Google spokesperson Courtenay Mencini said Wednesday that the company continued to “disagree with the allegations that we treated anyone differently, and remain committed to paying, hiring and leveling all employees fairly.”
The lawsuit alleged Google systematically paid people of certain racial and ethnic backgrounds less than White and Asian or Asian-American workers, using affected employees’ previous compensation to slot them into lower levels in the company’s jobs hierarchy, and denying promotions.
A separate lawsuit, seeking class action status, makes similar claims regarding Black workers at Google.
Under a California law in effect since 2018 — aimed at preventing previous discriminatory pay from leading to continuing inequities — employers are banned from asking job applicants about their salary history.
Cantu claimed that when she was hired and during the period the class action covers from mid-February 2018 to the end of 2024, it was Google’s standard practice to ask prospective hires what they were paid in their past three jobs.
Pay disparities at hiring, based on race and ethnicity, continued through affected workers’ employment because raises were based on a percentage of salary, the lawsuit alleged.
The lawsuit also claimed that for affected workers, Google systematically denied promotions to higher job levels, and that raise percentages were larger for higher-level employees.
Google was aware of the pay inequities via its own records and an internal study finding White workers were paid more than non-White workers, the lawsuit alleged.
Cantu claimed the unequal pay forced her to resign in 2021. The same month she quit and launched her lawsuit, Cantu took a job in business strategy at Google competitor Meta of Menlo Park, where she still works.
In 2022, Google agreed to pay $118 million to thousands of women to settle a lawsuit accusing it of putting female workers into lower salary levels than men, giving women lower-paying jobs, promoting women more slowly and less often, and generally paying female employees less than men for similar work.
Google was a pioneer in reporting on the composition of its workforce, launching annual diversity reports in 2014. But as the administration of President Donald Trump threatens legal action over hiring practices based on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, Google has joined other firms including Meta and Amazon in scaling back diversity hiring targets.
The firm’s most recent diversity report, from last year, showed its U.S. workforce was 46% Asian, 45% White, 8% Latino, 6% Black and 1% Native American. According to the report, 43% of Google’s U.S. employees were women.