On Monday, a former employee lodged a civil complaint against Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC, famous for its PlayStation gaming console, alleging that gender-based inequities regarding promotion and compensation resulted in male favoritism. The Northern District of California lawsuit seeks damages on behalf of several classes of current and former employees consisting of females and those who identify as female.
The complaint against Sony recounts the plaintiff’s experience with the company over her five year tenure, beginning in 2015. The filing points to a number of facts establishing the company’s supposed practices and policies of discriminating against female employees.
The complaint first explains that the plaintiff was never promoted, was in effect demoted, and that even though she had a direct subordinate, the company refused to recognize her position as a managerial one and maintained her title and pay grade in the staff category. Too, the plaintiff claims she personally overheard managers make gender-biased comments about female workers. In addition, the lawsuit contends that Sony’s human resources department created resistance to female promotion by losing track of them, or adjudging them ineligible for upward mobility because they did not hold a specific job title.
This year, the plaintiff reportedly informed Sony of the gender bias she experienced in a signed statement. Soon thereafter, the plaintiff was notified that she was being terminated, ostensibly because the department she worked for was being eliminated. “However, this was a false basis to terminate Plaintiff because she was not even a member of the department being dissolved,” the complaint says.
The pleading sets forth a dozen claims for relief under the Fair Labor Standards Act and California labor law on behalf of a nationwide class and California and former employee subclasses. The claims include workplace discrimination, wrongful termination, retaliation, failure to pay final wages, and negligent infliction of emotional distress.
The plaintiff is represented by ILG Legal Office P.C.
