Scott Ard, a former senior editorial director at Yahoo, filed
the lawsuit in California's Northern District Court in San Jose
on Tuesday, saying the company violated federal civil rights and
employment regulations.
Yahoo spokeswoman Carolyn Clark said in a statement that the
lawsuit had no merit and called the performance review process
"fair."
The lawsuit is the second this year accusing Yahoo of
discrimination against men, and targets one of the
highest-profile Silicon Valley female executives, Mayer, who is
in the middle of divesting Yahoo's core assets after failing to
turn the company around.
Ard, who joined Yahoo in 2011, argued that he had received
overall positive performance reviews and stock awards before
Mayer introduced a quarterly performance review (QPR) system
that left him with an unsatisfactory ranking.
"Yahoo's QPR Process permitted manipulation without oversight or
accountability and was thus more arbitrary and discriminatory
than the stack ranking used for a while by other employees," the
lawsuit said.
It accused Yahoo of violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and
U.S. Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification regulations.
Ard claims that since 2012, Yahoo has terminated more than 50
employees within a 30-day period on several occasions under the
system, according to court documents. Yahoo had 9,400 employees
as of March.
The lawsuit also claims former Chief Marketing Officer Kathy
Savitt "intentionally hired and promoted women because of their
gender," noting that 14 of about 16 senior level editorial
employees hired by her were women.
In February, former Yahoo Autos Managing Editor Gregory Anderson
sued the company, accusing it of gender discrimination and
violations related to the job review process.
The case, filed to U.S. District Court Northern California, San
Jose Division, is 5:16-cv-05635-NC.
(Reporting by Deborah M. Todd; Editing by Peter Henderson and
Richard Chang)
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