The ruling comes a week after a retrial in the lawsuit filed by Owen Diaz in 2017, after another jury awarded him $137 million in 2021.
A judge agreed with that jury that Tesla was responsible for Diaz’s discrimination but said the amount of compensation was excessive.
He ordered a new trial for damages for Diaz after he refused the already reduced $15 million.
Diaz had accused Tesla of failing to act appropriately in response to his repeated complaints to managers at the Fremont, California, factory that his employees often used racial slurs against him and painted racist signs and cartoons on walls and factory work areas.
On Monday, the jury awarded Diaz, who worked as an elevator operator, $175,000 in psychological damages for the discrimination he suffered and $3 million in punitive damages designed to punish and deter the illegal behavior in the future.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in a tweet that the “compensation award would have been zero” if the judge had allowed the company to present other evidence in the new trial.
“The jury did its best based on the information it had. I respect the decision,” Musk added.
The company said it does not tolerate discrimination within the workplace and takes workers’ complaints seriously.
In 2021, a jury awarded Diaz seven million dollars in compensation for the psychological damage he suffered due to racial discrimination and 130 million punitive damages, one of the largest rulings ever in a case of employment discrimination in the history of the United States.
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