LA Court rejects Activision Blizzard request to pause lawsuit

The LA County Court denied Activision Blizzard's request to stay the ongoing gender discrimination lawsuit filed against the company by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH), according to a report by Jame Batchelor of Gameindustry.biz.

The denied request alleged that two members of DFEH legal council team have conflicts of interest due to their previous work the Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission (EEOC) who recently settled their own lawsuit with ABK for 18-million dollars.

The DFEH objected to that settlement, saying in a statement via Stephen Totilo of Axios, "DFEH's pending enforcement action against [Activision Blizzard] will be harmed by uninformed waivers that the proposed decree makes conditional for victims to obtain relief. The proposed consent decree also contains provisions sanctioning the effective destruction and/or tampering of evidence critical to the DFEH's case, such as personnel files and other documents referencing sexual harassment, retaliation and discrimination."

The denial of ABK's motion means that the lawsuit will carry on full steam, and given the statement quoted above, it looks like the DFEH doesn't intend to let ABK get off the hook for their alleged gender discrimination and harassment as easily as the EEOC did with their settlement.