Former Diskeeper employees Alex Godelman and Marc Le Shay filed suit against their ex-employer earlier this year (PDF), accusing the company of firing them for refusing to sit through thinly-veiled religious indoctrination and join Scientology. Earlier this month, Diskeeper filed its response and, in a move that observers called “unusual” and “inappropriate”, motioned to strike (PDF) sections of the pair’s arguments.
Godelman and Le Shay’s arguments accuse Diskeeper of violating the California Fair Employment and Housing Act and California Labor Law on multiple counts, as well as failing to uphold its legal obligation to maintain a discrimination-free environment.
Diskeeper’s response seeks to black out Godelman and Le Shay’s request that the company “forever refrain from … requiring any employee, as a condition of employment, to study, adopt and/or apply the [Scientology-authored] ‘Hubbard Management Technology’ and/or the related ‘Hubbard Study Technology’ in the workplace.” The unusual request is justified by the company’s First Amendment rights, of which it argues that injunctions prohibiting religious practice in the workplace are unconstitutional.
Motions to strike are “rarely filed,” explains Scott Pilutik of the blog Reality Based Community. “A party will sometimes move to strike language in a pleading which is scandalous and has no relevance to the complaint or relief requested.”
Most notable, says Pilutik, is that Diskeeper’s argument constitutes an “implicit admission” that both of the Hubbard programs are “religious in nature.”
“Why would they advance the argument that Diskeeper has a protected interest in providing religious training to employees?” argues Pilutik. “Diskeeper claims that it in no way concedes that Hubbard Management and Study Technology are religious, but to anyone familiar with both Scientology and Hubbard's supposedly secular ‘technologies,’ the two brands are basically indistinguishable, and indeed, the establishment of supposedly secular fronts was intended by Hubbard to be a recruiting tool.”
The pair’s original complaint chronicles the individual, brief periods of time that both Godelman and Le Shay were employed with Diskeeper, where – despite exhibiting stellar performance at both Diskeeper and their former employers – management continuously forced them to attend Scientology-themed company training seminars and ultimately adopt the religion. Godelman, who practices Judaism, had his employment suddenly terminated after half a year with the company in October 19, 2006, while Le Shay was forced to resign less than a month after joining.
The lawsuit goes on to describe a work environment saturated with Scientology influences: religious art adorns the walls, and all new employees receive a copy of L. Ron Hubbard’s The Way to Happiness – which includes advice on personal life, including sex. The company frequently mentioned or held a massive library of Scientology books offered for sale and loan, and management often used Scientology lexicon in day-to-day work. Ultimately, the lawsuit argues, Diskeeper employees were “constantly bombarded with Scientology imagery and ideology in the work environment,” whether they wanted it or not.
Furthermore, attempts by the pair to seek advice from other members of upper management almost always resulted in an order to conform – for their own good.
Slashdot notes that Diskeeper former CEO and current Chairman Craig Jensen is a “high level, publicly avowed” Scientologist who attributes Diskeeper’s success to Hubbard’s teachings.
A hearing for Diskeeper’s motion to strike will take place on January 27, 2009, and a tentative trial date is set for mid-June.
