Tesla's production floor is a "hotbed for racist behaviour," more than 100 African-American employees claimed in a lawsuit in which they alleged black workers at the electric car maker suffer severe and pervasive harassment.
The employees are seeking permission from a judge to sue as a group and are seeking unspecified general and punitive monetary damages as well as an order for Tesla to implement policies to prevent and correct harassment.
This week Tesla reported its biggest ever quarterly loss, as it spent more to speed up production of the Model 3 - it's first mass market car.
"Although Tesla stands out as a groundbreaking company at the forefront of the electric car revolution, its standard operating procedure at the Tesla factory is pre-Civil Rights era race discrimination," the employees said in the complaint, filed on Monday in California's Alameda County Superior Court.
Tesla has roughly 33,000 employees globally but has never publicly released its diversity statistics.