Google's fired 'diversity memo' engineer exits lawsuit for arbitration: report

The former Google engineer whose firing inflamed America's culture wars is abandoning his lawsuit against the company in favor of arbitration, according to a new report. Two men who joined the suit will continue the court fight, the report said.

James Damore was ousted last year from his software-engineering job over an internal memo he wrote suggesting women may be biologically less suited for technology jobs.

Google's termination of Damore made him a darling of the alt-right, sparked an aborted plan for a demonstration at the digital-advertising giant's Mountain View campus, and put the company in the crosshairs of U.S. conservatives alleging Google was systematically crushing free speech.

In his lawsuit, filed in January in Santa Clara County Superior Court, Damore claimed Google discriminates against men, conservatives and white people, using "illegal hiring quotas" to employ a certain percentage of women and minorities. Employees who express views not shared by the majority of Googlers are singled out and punished, Damore alleged.

His lawyer, Harmeet Dhillon, alleged at a press conference that a "Lord of the Flies" mentality at Google meant an employee could be "singled out and then group shamed, bullied and fired."

Upon Damore's firing, Google CEO Sundar Pichai wrote in a memo to employees that he'd been turfed for breaking the company's code of conduct, which requires Googlers to "do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination."

Pichai said that much of what Damore's memo expressed was "fair to debate," but that portions of it advanced "harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace."

The company has consistently denied that it discriminates against workers on the basis of their political views.

Another former Google employee, David Gudeman, joined Damore in suing Google, and will also move to arbitration, tech website The Verge reported Wednesday.

Three others later joined the suit. Two were former job applicants claiming they were denied jobs for being white men, and the third was a former Google employee. The two former job seekers, Stephen McPherson and Michael Burns, remain in the suit following Damore's exit, while the former employee, Manuel Amador, has dropped his claims, according to The Verge.