A subjective leveling system and HR investigation gaps proved costly for the tech giant
A federal court has upheld a jury verdict finding Google liable for gender discrimination and retaliation against a female technical director.
In an opinion issued on April 3, 2026, the Southern District of New York denied Google's attempt to overturn the October 2023 jury verdict in favor of Ulku Rowe, a former technical director in Google Cloud. The court also slashed the punitive damages award from $1,000,000 to $250,000, while granting Rowe's request for attorneys' fees and costs.
The case turns on a set of facts that HR professionals will find uncomfortably familiar. Rowe joined Google in December 2016 as a technical director in the Office of the Chief Technology Officer. She was assigned to Level 8 – a designation that was never mentioned in the job description, the interview process, or her offer letter. She later discovered that five men hired for the same role were brought in at Level 9. At trial, three of those male comparators testified that their work was functionally the same as Rowe's. One said they were doing the same sort of work under the same circumstances. Another described her role as identical to his, aside from the industry vertical.
Rowe raised her concerns with her supervisor in late 2017 and was directed to HR. The response she received was that there was no mechanism to revisit leveling decisions after hire – the only option was to pursue promotion through the standard process. Rowe escalated the matter in August 2018, this time referencing gender explicitly. Her complaint was forwarded to Google's Employee Relations team, which concluded the leveling disparity was unrelated to gender. The written findings, however, only referenced Level 8 comparators – a notable departure from the verbal explanation Rowe had been given, which focused on Level 9 men.
Within days of Rowe's August 2018 complaint, the internal recruiter handling her candidacy for a VP of Financial Services role wrote in a weekly update that she did not appear to be a viable candidate – even though two interviewers had given positive feedback. Months later, the role went to a male colleague whom Rowe testified was less experienced. Rowe was offered the choice of working under him, returning to her former team without any financial services responsibilities, or finding another job at Google. She chose to go back, but was told not to do any financial services work – despite teams across the company, including the man who got the role, continuing to seek her out for exactly that expertise.
A second episode followed in early 2020, when Rowe expressed interest in a VP of Financial Services – Sales role. After a brief, informal coffee meeting with the hiring manager, the same internal recruiter told Rowe she was not a good fit – citing a two-hour interview that Rowe testified never took place. That recruiter had been interviewed by Employee Relations in connection with Rowe's lawsuit just weeks earlier. Notes from that session described Rowe as abrasive, cantankerous, and bristly. At trial, the recruiter was confronted with his own prior deposition testimony, in which he admitted he never looked into Rowe's qualifications.
The jury found Google liable for gender discrimination and retaliation under New York City and state law. It awarded Rowe $150,000 in compensatory damages for emotional distress and $1,000,000 in punitive damages, but $0 in back pay.
Judge Rearden's April 3 opinion left the liability findings intact. The court found that hiring packets introduced at trial showed men were brought in at Level 9 despite lacking advanced degrees, large-team management experience, or backgrounds in industries as significant as financial services. Rowe's own packet, by contrast, flagged her as more junior and questioned whether she was senior enough – notwithstanding her comparable or superior credentials.
On punitive damages, the court found the original $1,000,000 figure excessive. While the evidence supported a finding that Google violated the law, the court determined it did not rise to the level of moral culpability needed to sustain such an award. There was no evidence of violence, threats, or inappropriate epithets from decision-makers. The reduced figure of $250,000 matches the maximum civil penalty under New York City's human rights law.
Rowe's request to be placed into the VP role or promoted to Level 9 was denied. The court concluded that the employer-employee relationship had been irreparably damaged by years of litigation and that Rowe was no longer employed by Google. Her motions for injunctive and declaratory relief were also denied. The court did grant her request for attorneys' fees and costs – she had sought roughly $4.6 million – with the exact amount to be determined at a later proceeding.
For HR professionals, the case reads like a catalog of process failures. A subjective and undisclosed leveling system produced a gendered outcome. An internal investigation reached inconsistent conclusions depending on the format. Temporal proximity between complaints and adverse decisions served as circumstantial evidence of retaliation. And a recruiter's negative characterizations of a complaining employee became some of the most damaging evidence at trial. Every one of those breakdowns occurred inside a company of Google's size and resources.
The case is Rowe v. Google LLC, No. 19 Civ. 8655 (JHR), in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
