A gay former Beatport engineer claims his supposed wrongful dismissal, allegedly a result of the Director of Engineering's "cultural differences," were just a smokescreen for sex discrimination, allegedly violating California law.
Plaintiff Mark Demma filed a wrongful dismissal lawsuit against his former employer Beatport LLC on Aug. 21 in San Francisco Superior Court. Demma is accusing Beatport of four counts of violation of California Law, including wrongful discharge, harassment based on sexual orientation, failure to prevent harassment and discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Beatport is a Denver based company supplying music for disc jockeys. According to its website, Beatport is considered a leading worldwide source of electronic music for DJs, producers and their followers, offering a large catalog of curated digital music from leading artists and labels. Beatport maintains brick-and-mortar offices in Denver and Los Angeles.
According to the complaint, Demma served as Beatport's Director of Site Reliability Engineering. According to the complaint, he began working for Beatport in January 2021 until his alleged wrongful dismissal on June 23. Until that point, the complaint asserts Demma was in good standing and had never knowingly received a negative complaint, formal or otherwise from his supervisor or anyone else at Beatport.
Beginning in April, Demma and his executive colleagues allegedly collaborated during weekly videoconferencing to discuss the launch of a new Beatport website, referred internally as "Nextgen." During that meeting Demma allegedly expressed concern over the rush to launch, counseling they should wait until a soft launch could be done to assess any potential issues. According to the complaint, his supervisor then allegedly berated Demma for his comments, blaming Demma and his team for a lack of readiness to not already be aware or attending to any known or potential issues.
Follwing the April Nextgen meeting, Sedin allegedly requested a one-on-one with his supervisor.
According to the complaint, Demma claimed his supervisor encouraged him to speak up confidently with any concerns about Beatport or Nextgen. Demma asserted he did not feel comfortable doing so, saying he felt intimidated by his supervisor. In the complaint, he indicated that his supervisor again berated him and reportedly further accused Demma of improperly discussing compensation with other Beatport employees. According to the complaint, Demma was then forbidden to have any further conversations about compensation with any Beatport employee.
According to the complaint, Following his one-on-one, Demma expressed to concerns to upper management about his supervisor's conduct, both before, during and after the Nextgen meeting.
According to the complaint, Demma asserted upper management executives agreed the supervisor's conduct toward him at the Nextgen meeting was inappropriate and warranted escalating the issue. Another executive speculated that the alleged hostility by Demma's supervisor, a Bosnian citizen, most likely stemmed from “cultural differences".
Demma asserts in the complaint that his alleged mistreatment was a result of his supervisor's alleged discomfort with and disdain for openly gay queer men, like Demma.
Despite the alleged concern from upper management, Demma claimed Beatport took no further corrective action, and even allegedly overlooked further harsh treatment from his supervisor, ultimately culminating in Demma allegedly being cut off from executive meetings, including over Nextgen, and then terminated.
Demma said the company claimed his termination was the result of performance issues, which were never specified.
Demma is demanding a jury trial, general and special damages, punitive and actual damages for loss of wages, court costs and legal fees.
Demma is represented by attorney Michael A. Slater of The Slater Law Firm, of Los Angeles.