A former senior manager for Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers is suing the Marina del Rey-based company for nearly $80 million, alleging she was subjected to sexual harassment, pay inequities due to her gender and then fired this spring while on unpaid leave for “blowing the whistle.”
ICANN is a private, non-government, nonprofit corporation with responsibility for Internet protocol address space allocation, protocol parameter assignment, domain name system management and root server system management functions.
Plaintiff Tanzanica King, 46, was a senior manager for meeting strategy and design. King’s allegations include wrongful termination, gender violence, sexual harassment, retaliation, harassment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, defamation and violations of the state Labor Code. She seeks more than $77 million in damages.
“For all its poetic waxing of gender equality, ICANN is a rotted apple veiled by a thin shiny veneer,” the suit brought Tuesday states.
An ICANN representative issued a statement Thursday, saying the company has received the complaint and is reviewing it.
ICANN’s website states that the company’s “work culture energizes all of us. It’s not something we simply write and talk about; it is something we feel, creating and sustaining a positive work culture is a critical part of our success,” the suit notes.
But the complaint alleges that ICANN’s policymakers and board members “have knowingly continued to treat its female employees as second-class citizens” and subject women to “frat boy culture” that pays women less than men and also subjects women employees to an “enveloping culture of rampant harassment which is routinely ignored.”
Although females report widespread pay and promotion discrimination and sexual harassment to ICANN every year via surveys, studies, reports to superiors and to human resources, nothing changes, the suit alleges.
At 22 years of service, King was ICANN’s second-longest tenured employee, but in exchange for her dedication, she was repeatedly passed over for promotions, paid lower salaries than male colleagues, sexually harassed and wrongfully terminated for “blowing the whistle,” the suit states.
During an ICANN conference in Denmark in 2017, King’s supervisor sat next to her and tried to hold one of her hands and he also groped her legs under a table, according to the suit, which further alleges the boss repeatedly tried to grab her hand when they walked along hallways and streets and also complimented the plaintiff on her breast size.
The supervisor was fired in February 2023 for his conduct toward King, according to the suit, which further states that many women who work for ICANN have shared that sexual harassment is “endemic” to the company.
In 2014, King discovered that ICANN paid, at minimum, many lower-positioned men significantly higher salaries than it paid the plaintiff, according to the complaint. One ICANN employee with knowledge of the firm’s inner workings told King that she would be better off at another company, the suit states.
King went on unpaid medical leave due in December due to the stress she suffered from the retaliation and harassment she experienced for complaining about her work environment, according to her suit, which further states that she was fired in May by managers who told her the move was a cost-cutting measure, even though King was not being paid at the time and several employees had to handle the workload she previously did by herself.