$20 million lawsuit claims anti-Asian bias at San Jose tech company

A long-time employee at a San Jose tech company is seeking $20 million in a wrongful-termination lawsuit accusing the firm of a “culture of prejudice against Asians,” and a manager of saying his internal presentation on discrimination “made White people feel bad.”

Lumentum — which makes laser- and optics-based hardware for telecommunications, data centers and other business uses — fired Andre Wong late last year for “vocally and persistently” pointing out alleged discrimination against Asian-American employees, Wong alleged in the lawsuit filed June 30 in Santa Clara County Superior Court.

Wong worked at the multinational company for more than 20 years, and created and led development of a new product line based on three-dimensional scanning and facial-recognition technologies, according to the lawsuit. He claimed his work, and connections with Apple, Microsoft and other tech titans, brought in $1 billion in business to Lumentum and “enabled the company to survive, grow and acquire other companies.”

A Lumentum announcement from 2021 described Wong’s leadership and guidance as “instrumental in achieving Lumentum’s leadership in 3D Sensing.” Other announcements from the company described him as a “thought leader.”

Lumentum did not respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit. On its website, CEO Alan Lowe characterized “diversity, equity and inclusion” as a priority for the company, saying management feels “a sense of responsibility to lead the industry.”

Despite Wong’s work creating “a substantial portion of Lumentum’s revenue,” his lawsuit says White men dominated Lumentum’s management and he was “never seriously considered for executive-level leadership.” Although more than 60% of Lumentum’s U.S. employees were Asian in the 2019-to-2022 time period covered in Wong’s legal action, fewer than 15% of senior executives were Asian, his lawsuit claimed.

Asian and Asian-American workers in Silicon Valley have long faced a gap between their representation in workforces and their presence in leadership positions. At Google, 45% of U.S. employees are Asian, and Asians hold 32% of leadership jobs, the Mountain View company said in its 2023 diversity report. According to Menlo Park social media giant Meta’s 2022 diversity report, 47% of its U.S. employees were Asian, and Asian people occupied 29% of leadership positions. San Francisco business-software giant Salesforce reported that in 2022 its workforce was 27% Asian, with 20% Asian leadership.

According to Wong’s lawsuit, Lumentum’s engineering teams were mostly Asian, with many workers from China, and “it had been common to hear Chinese engineers speak in Mandarin,” the lawsuit alleged. “But this communication was put to a stop when a senior White manager prohibited Mandarin from being spoken in the office.” An email from Mandarin-speaking engineers to company management seeking to address the matter at an upcoming all-hands meeting was ignored, the lawsuit claimed.

Just before a board of directors meeting where Wong, a native English speaker, was present, “a senior White executive pointedly ridiculed (him) for his pronunciation of ‘program,’ telling him to enunciate his ‘Rs,’” the lawsuit alleged.

At another meeting, a senior White executive discussing failure of a product in a certain section of a factory floor in China asked, ‘Are they steaming rice in that section of the production floor?’” the lawsuit claimed.

When violence against Asian people rose during the COVID pandemic, Wong “became more and more vocal about workplace discrimination against Asian Americans,” according to his lawsuit. After George Floyd, a Black man, was murdered by a White policeman in 2020, Wong was asked to participate in an Lumentum program about racial issues, according to the lawsuit. After communicating with many Asian-American employees, “he realized that discrimination against Asians in promotions at Lumentum was widespread,” the lawsuit claimed. “Asians were held to a higher standard. They were not seen as business leaders. They were seen as the perpetual worker bees.”

Wong’s email “went viral within the company” and workers began to speak out about their experiences with discrimination, leading Wong to co-found the internal “Asian Employee Resource Group” to promote Asian-American representation, mentorship and education at Lumentum, according to the lawsuit.

The group conducted surveys and “highlighted data which showed the difficulty of Asian Americans to advance within the company,” the lawsuit alleged. “For the first time, Lumentum was confronted with someone who spoke out against the discrimination against Asians at the executive level in the company.”

During a party organized by the group for employees, Wong “shared his story of discrimination,” but his presentation “was not well received by the company’s upper management,” the lawsuit claimed. A member of upper management arranged to speak one-on-one with leaders of the resource group, and let them know that Wong’s presentation “made White people feel bad,” the lawsuit alleged.

Wong continued to push within the company against what he perceived as anti-Asian discrimination and lack of diversity in leadership, and in December he was fired him in retaliation, the lawsuit claimed.