A Silicon Valley engineering manager claims in a new lawsuit that his employer of nearly 10 years fired him after he offended two co-workers with Facebook posts he wrote the day Hamas attacked Israel.
Kamal Koraitem alleged that three days after his Oct. 7 posts on his personal Facebook account — described in the lawsuit as “political commentary on the Israel-Palestine conflict” — his supervisor at Microchip Technology in Santa Clara confronted him because two colleagues had seen the posts and reported them to the company. His supervisor demanded that he delete the posts, and Koraitem complied, his lawsuit claimed. Koraitem also deactivated his Facebook and Instagram accounts, according to the lawsuit.
The supervisor thanked him the next day for promptly deleting the posts, and told him to meet with a company human resources director, the lawsuit alleged. The director suggested Koraitem, at Microchip since August 2014, “contact the offended employees” to set up a meeting about the posts, and Koraitem began arrangements to meet with the two, the lawsuit claimed.
But the next day Koraitem’s manager and Microchip’s vice-president of HR called him and told him he was being fired for breaking the company’s social media policy, the lawsuit alleged. The manager and executive did not explain how Koraitem had violated the policy, according to the lawsuit, filed Jan. 10 in Santa Clara County Superior Court.
Eight days after his termination, Microchip updated its social media policy to allow it to fire employees over posts visible to other employees, the lawsuit alleged.
Microchip, headquartered in Arizona, with design and manufacturing facilities in Santa Clara, did not respond to requests for comment.
Hamas, designated as a terrorist group by the U.S., Canada and European Union, attacked Israel on October 7, killing an estimated 1,200 people, with about 250 others taken hostage. Gaza authorities say Israel’s bombardment and invasion of Gaza in response has killed more than 24,000 people.
Koraitem’s lawsuit did not detail the contents of his Facebook posts or the reasons co-workers purportedly took offense. However, according to the lawsuit, Koraitem supports “sympathy for Gazans who suffered from daily dehumanization.”
The lawsuit also makes reference to two alleged company-wide emails to employees from Microchip CEO Ganesh Moorthy. In the first, Moorthy expressed sympathy for Israel and identified resources for supporting Israelis, but did not express sympathy for Gazans or identify resources for supporting them, the lawsuit claimed. In the second, Moorthy expressed sympathy for both sides, according to the lawsuit. After the first email from Moorthy, Koraitem complained in an email to Moorthy about the company’s purported “discrimination towards individuals of Palestinian national origin,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit claimed Microchip broke several California Labor Code provisions, including one that bans employers from making or enforcing any policy that prevents employees from engaging in politics. Koraitem, according to the lawsuit, was “exercising his lawful right to engage in political activity” outside the office and during non-working hours. He also claimed that the company, by purportedly demanding he take down the posts, coerced him into refraining from political activity, in violation of another labor code provision. And he alleged that his termination resulted from retaliation over his complaint about purported discrimination.
Koraitem is seeking unspecified damages and reinstatement in his job.