Given how significantly many people have misunderstood Damore's claims, this seems to open up a hole for companies to mischaracterize someone as a racist/sexist/etc and then fire them over it.
People really did exaggerate how bad the memo really was. That said, it definitely has portions that brought up stereotypes without citing direct evidence, like how men have a higher drive to achieve status. Google considered these statements "discriminatory," which sounded reasonable enough to the NLRB. It doesn't matter whether these statements were actually discriminatory because they clearly fall outside the bounds of protected speech.
Are all of these issues in academia settled which you refer to? Or is it that, maybe, Damore accepted side Bs views, whereas you accept side As views, but this isn't settle in academia?
Could you point out, perhaps, the most offensive, non-supported statement that Damore had in his memo?
https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-bio...
Do you know of any?
>And that is what the Big Five represents: a consistent model of how humans reflect individuality using language, no more. There were no considerations of findings in neuroanatomy, neurochemistry, experimental psychology, observations of behavior of people or animals in real situations – none of this was used at the research stage leading to the development of the Big Five. In this sense we can say that the Big Five does not represent the structure of temperament or the structure of biologically based traits, even though lexical perception reflects some elements of it.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3903487/
The big five can still be used for self-reported correlational analysis, but Damore used it in an argument against social constructs, when the method itself can be heavily biased by the social constructs he's arguing against.
Though it is probably true that the lawyers in the case didn't read the citations. It wasn't their job to determine whether Damore's statements were scientifically accurate, and they stated that his statements were discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment, regardless of the scientific references and analysis.
No, it doesn't.
Because the interpretation of the firing company doesn't determine the legality. Whether, on the evidence, a firing is solely due to actually legally unprotected statements (not statements that the employer chooses to misconstrue as unprotected) is.
Like, sure, a manager could wake up and just fire you because they were grumpy. But if it is discovered that there was internal communications about their political opinions leading up to it, then there would be a case.
If the NRLA believes only parts of Damore's memo were working towards improving working conditions and other parts were working to discriminate against women, which part is which.
To someone that agrees with Damore, it looks like everyone mischaracterized his effort to improve working conditions as sexism. Then Google was able to use that as cover to fire him for protected organizing.
But, I haven't read exactly what the NRLA found to be discriminatory. This would help anyone that is legitimately trying to improve working conditions and trying not to promote discrimination.