Lawsuit dismissed by employees: gender may continue to come up at Audi

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You can continue to officially change at Audi! The German automaker’s lawsuit against its gender-sensitive language guide ultimately failed. This was reported by the specialist magazine “Automobilwoche”, based on information from the German Press Agency.

The Munich Higher Regional Court therefore dismissed an appeal against an earlier decision of the Ingolstadt District Court without an oral hearing. Citing the decision on Monday, a court spokesperson said the appeal “clearly has no chance of success”. The Ingolstadt decision of July 2022 is therefore final.

Annoying gender gap

An employee of Audi’s parent company VW, who had to work with Audi employees, filed a lawsuit against the Ingolstadt automaker. He was annoyed by Audi’s guidelines that employees use gender forms with an underscore (for example, “employees”) in communicating with him – this underscore is also known as the gender gap. The VW employee therefore sued Audi for injunctive relief.

But the judges took a different view and found that the General Equal Opportunities Act or other laws were not violated. The Legal Department stressed that gender-language opponents do not have the right to be “left alone”. The process was followed across Germany, as many other companies also have guidelines on the use of gender-sensitive language. The claimant was supported by the “German Language Association”, which also denied gender.

Source: Blick