Apple sued by ex-patent attorney alleging discrimination
After complaining about a male colleague, a former Apple patent attorney filed a lawsuit against Apple alleging discrimination and harassment.
Jayna Richardson Whitt filed a lawsuit against Apple in California, alleging that the firm discriminated against her after learning that she was a domestic abuse victim by rejecting her for higher-level employment roles at the company.
Whitt has been employed at Apple since 2006. She claims that throughout this period, she advanced to positions like Director of IP Transactions but also experienced discrimination.
According to the complaint she filed in state court in San Mateo, California on December 20, a White male supervisor “favored Caucasian males and subjected minorities, females, and employees with disabilities to discriminatory treatment.” The patent attorney, who described herself as a single parent of Asian heritage, claimed in her lawsuit that the discrimination was visible in hiring choices, mentoring, assignments, and invitations to meetings.
According to Whitt’s complaint, the company spent more than $630,000 to shield Chief Executive Tim Cook from a stalker in 2021. She claimed that despite uploading a video of a White male coworker brandishing a gun and sharing proof of “death threats and terrorization,” Apple left her “defenseless.”
Whitt said that the company left her on her own to secure her devices, accounts, and Wi-Fi without any assistance from the company’s global security division. Apple initiated an investigation after Whitt published an article in April exposing the company’s harassment and discrimination.
According to Whitt’s complaint, the company conducted an investigation into her behavior after she published the article before terminating her in July. Apple HR criticized her for “allowing a personal relationship to interfere with my work, not adequately securing my devices and accounts, and being unprofessional during the investigation.”
In July, Whitt’s job was terminated “based upon pretextual accusations that she violated Apple policies,” according to her complaint.
Other women have openly recounted their experiences with sexism, harassment, abuse, and other problems at Apple. To draw attention to the issues within the corporation, former employee Cher Scarlett and others started the #AppleToo initiative in 2021.
After weeks of public declarations from Apple employees about internal grievances going unaddressed or dismissed, the group was formed.
In 2021, Scarlett complained to the National Labor Relations Board. She agreed to ask for a withdrawal once she and Apple reached a settlement, but the board rejected the motion since it was illegal.
It is still looking into the situation. In a meeting in September 2021, problems pertaining to employee relations were discussed in part by Apple CEO Tim Cook and SVP of Retail and People Deirdre O’Brien. Pay equity was among the topics that were considered.
In an August statement, Apple said that its policies against discrimination are clear. The company noted, “There are some accounts raised that do not reflect our intentions or our policies and we should have handled them differently, including certain exchanges reported in this story. As a result, we will make changes to our training and processes.”
I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.
