A federal jury in San Francisco has decided Tesla has to pay up, ordering the multinational automotive company to pay close to $3.2 million to a former Black employee who accused Tesla of racial harassment.

According to Reuters, the trial lasted a week and came five years after the plaintiff, Owen Diaz, filed the lawsuit. In 2021, a federal court found Tesla neglected to take appropriate steps to stop the racial harassment Diaz and other Black employees faced. The BBC reported the jury in the 2021 case decided Diaz should receive $137 million in damages. However, the judge considered the amount excessive and demanded a new trial following Diaz’s decline of an award reduced to $15 million.

In 2017, Diaz claimed Telsa failed to act after complaining to his managers that other employees at the factory in Fremont, California, used racist slurs and drew swastikas and other racist images and words on common areas in the workplace. He explained that he and other Black employees “encountered a scene straight from the Jim Crow era on one occasion.”

Diaz, an elevator operator at the factory, will receive $175,000 in damages for emotional distress and $3 million in punitive damages.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk addressed the ruling on Twitter.

“If we had been allowed to introduce new evidence, the verdict would’ve been zero imo,” he wrote. “Jury did the best they could with the information they had. I respect the decision.”

Musk didn’t elaborate on the “new evidence.”

His lawyer, Alex Spiro, has not commented on the decision. Reuters reported Tesla said it takes discrimination in the workplace very seriously.

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