On 6th December (local time), the Superior Court of the State of California, County of Santa Clara, denied the Department of Fair Employment and Housing’s (DFEH) motion to permit the use of a fictitious name (John Doe) in the Cisco Caste Discrimination lawsuit. The case, officially recognised as Case No 20CV372366, was filed against Cisco Systems, Inc. and two individuals, Sundar Iyer and Ramana Kompella. It revolved around the so-called caste discrimination of the plaintiff, whose identity was withheld for “security reasons”. The court’s decision has spotlighted the utilisation of anonymity for a party referred to as “John Doe”.
In its motion, DFEH sought permission from the court to use a fictitious name for the individual. Initially, the request was dismissed by the trial court. However, the Court of Appeal intervened and stressed the importance of considering potential harm to the plaintiff’s family members in India.
The court ruled that someone can be allowed to keep the name secret during the proceedings only if there is a big chance that revealing the identity could cause harm. Furthermore, anonymity can be provided only if there is no other way to protect the individuals without letting the public know what happened in court.
After examining the evidence provided by DFEH during the hearing of the matter in question, the court determined that the risk of harm to John Doe and his family, particularly those live in India, did not meet the high burden set by the overriding interest test. The court placed the emphasis on the lack of specific and current evidence of harm. The court further pointed out that the incidents mentioned by the plaintiff took place years ago and questioned the likelihood of present harm.
Notably, the plaintiff informed the court that his mother-in-law told him about the incident when her neighbours stopped interacting with her because she cooked meat. The incident occurred decades ago and did not establish if it was tied to the fact that she is a Dalit. The court decided not to consider the incident as evidence in the matter.
Based on the evidence and arguments, the court denied DFEH’s motion. Cisco Systems is not obligated to respond to the first complaint. Instead, DFEH has been asked to change and re-file the complaint within a week, mentioning the plaintiff’s real name. Cisco Systems has been given one month to reply after DFEH files the changed complaint.
Who is John Doe
Earlier, OpIndia found the potential identification details of the anonymous plaintiff, John Doe, in the failed Cisco case against Iyer. We examined CRD documents and publicly available information from LinkedIn, IIT Bombay, ContactOut, CrunchBase, RocketReach, and USPTO. The investigation focused on Chetan Narsude, a Principal Engineer at Cisco and co-founder of Candid, Iyer’s startup, due to the connection between Iyer and Narsude’s shared attendance at IIT Bombay. Patents filed by Iyer and Narsude implicated their collaboration and concurrent enrollment at IIT Bombay, and shared projects under Professor SSSP Rao further strengthened the link between Iyer and Narsude.
The Cisco Caste discrimination case
In October 2020, a complaint was filed by a Dalit engineer who alleged that he faced caste-based discrimination and harassment while working at Cisco’s San Jose campus. The case has now concluded, and while the CRD has found that the two individual engineers are not directly responsible, it maintains that the work environment at Cisco enabled the alleged discrimination to occur.
In April 2023, the California Civil Rights Department (CRD) dropped its case against two Indian-origin engineers who were initially named alongside Cisco as defendants. However, the department is still pursuing its claims against Cisco itself for allegedly fostering a hostile work environment based on caste.