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Valve Taken to Court for Transphobia

Valve Taken to Court for Transphobia

By Akhil Arora | Updated: 25 May 2016 18:41 IST

Highlights

The company is being sued for $3.1 million.
Plaintiff argues transgender discrimination and hostile environment.
Valve denies all allegations, and wishes to dismiss complaint.

Valve, the video game developer behind titles such as Counter-Strike and maker of digital distribution platform Steam, is being sued by a former employee for $3.1 million (roughly Rs. 20.8 crores) because the person was discriminated against and put into a hostile work environment.

According to the lawsuit filed last month and now obtained by Polygon, the employee was laid off mere days after she put in a complaint to the human resources department about Valve "utilising people who were interested in their products to provide translation services for free". She said that another reason she was fired was because her being a transgender didn't sit well with the supervisor, who regularly referred to the plaintiff as "it" in the office.

(Also see: Valve Being Taken to Court to Allow Resale of Digital Games)

Valve, for what it's worth, has denied any wrongdoing and asked the court to dismiss the complaint. The company denied all of the former employee's allegations, including that they tried to cover up firing her by moving the job to Washington and then saying no to her even after she agreed to relocate.

In the lawsuit, she has noted eight causes including wrongful termination, disability/gender identity discrimination, failure to accommodate /engage in the interactive process, hostile work environment, retaliation, unpaid wages for the overtime, unfair business practices, and wrongful classification as independent contractor.

The last of those happened sometime in 2012 after the plaintiff requested a change in location from Washington to Los Angeles, in order to properly go through her gender transition surgery. While Valve did allow her to work from home in Los Angeles while recovering, they also reclassified her as an independent contractor.

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