Ritu Jha–
In the ongoing caste-based discrimination case between Cisco and the Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) now called the Civil Rights Department (CRD), a Santa Clara County Court judge says she now believes there is no harm in disclosing the name of the plaintiff ‘John Doe’, because it lacks evidence that it would harm him or his family back in India.
In a ruling on Dec 6, the Plaintiff’s CRD made a motion to proceed by a fictitious name, but Judge Amber Rosen at the Superior Court of Santa Clara County in California, denied saying: “The Court does not find the evidence submitted, including the various declarations, sufficient to show the necessary likelihood or severity of harm to warrant allowing Doe to proceed anonymously.”
READ: indica’s comprehensive coverage of the Cisco caste lawsuit
According to court document: “Doe does not describe any assaults, acts of violence, or even threats of violence toward his family now or ever. India is an enormous country and there is no evidence showing how many people in India share Doe’s last name or whether any of the (likely) vast number of people that share his last name can be identified as his family members.“
The case, filed on June 30, 2020, between then DFEH and Cisco Systems, Inc. in the Northern District of California was one of the rare cases filed based on Indian caste, which many Indian origin people working in the US themselves were surprised that caste still exists and plays a dominant role among highly educated Indians.
The case was extensively covered by the media and has divided the community which is still healing after California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed SB403, a bill that would have included caste and ancestry in the list of discrimination categories.
The lawsuit alleges that the victim (named as John Doe in the court documents) was an IIT Engineer and he was harassed by his managers because he was from a lower Indian caste than them.
The lawsuit alleged that two upper-caste Brahmins, Sundara Iyer and Raman Kompella, of harassing Doe, in their capacity as managers and “outing him as a Dalit to colleagues”. Cisco was sued for allegedly denying the worker, who immigrated to the US from India, salary raises and professional opportunities, as well as making him “endure a hostile work environment”.
In April 2023, the California Civil Rights Department voluntarily dismissed its caste discrimination against two Cisco engineers, but continued the case with Cisco where employees are predominantly South Asian workforce and according to the lawsuit, it alleged Cisco failed to even acknowledge the unlawful nature of the conduct against the manager, nor did it take any steps necessary to prevent such discrimination, harassment, and retaliation from continuing in its workplace.
A 2018 survey of South Asians in the U.S. found that 67% of Dalits reported being treated unfairly at their American workplaces.
The lawsuit says as a direct result of these unlawful employment practices, Doe suffered emotional distress including, but not limited to, emotional pain, suffering, mental anguish, humiliation, and hopelessness.
The Coalition of Hindus of North America (CoHNA) through a press note stated: “The wild claims helped give credence and sway public opinion around the bogey of caste discrimination in the US. As we all know, it has led to a slew of laws and policies that now profile South Asians and Hindu Americans, assuming we are more guilty of discrimination and hierarchy than any other communities in the US.”
It added, “In a vindication for sound jurisprudence, California Judge Rosen calls the bluff on claims of great harm if this millionaire’s name was disclosed publicly. In a scathing rebuke, the Judge opined: “If claims of lack of promotion and name-calling from decades ago coupled with generalized statistics of continuing and sometimes violent discrimination were sufficient to allow a person to file anonymously there is scarcely any discrimination case in which a plaintiff could not meet the burden to proceed under a fictitious name.”
