By Michael Elkins
California's Office of Administrative Law, in a letter, declined to review Tesla Inc's (NASDAQ:TSLA) claim that the state's civil rights watchdog suing the company is rushing without conducting full investigations.
The Department of Civil Rights (DCR) has filed a pending lawsuit against Tesla’s Fremont plant in California, claiming that the plant was a racially segregated workplace where Black employees were harassed and discriminated against in terms of job assignments, discipline and pay.
The DCR said working conditions at the plant are so intolerable that many Black employees have been forced to quit.
"Workers referred to the Tesla factory as the 'slaveship' or 'the plantation,' where defendants’ production leads 'crack[ed] the whip,'" the agency said in the complaint.
In the pending lawsuit, Tesla has argued that the DCR sued without first notifying the company of all of the claims or giving it a chance to settle. A California state judge is scheduled to hold a hearing on Wednesday on Tesla's motion to dismiss the case.