Former Yahoo editor Scott Ard filed a lawsuit accusing the company of firing a number of employees under a performance review system implemented by CEO Marissa Mayer, according to The Mercury News.
Mr. Ard, who now serves as editor-in-chief of the Silicon Valley Business Journal, was hired at Yahoo in 2011. He was fired in January 2015.
The lawsuit, filed in district court in San Jose, Calif., claims Ms. Mayer imposed a performance review system that enabled high-level managers to subjectively change scores of employees with whom they had no contact, which subsequently led to various employees being fired.
Mr. Ard's lawsuit also alleges the performance review system "permitted and encouraged discrimination based on gender or any other personal bias held by management." For example, Mr. Ard said Yahoo News Editor-in-Chief Megan Lieberman once lowered the scores of three male employees but maintained the scores of three female employees because they were male, according to the article.
Mr. Ard's lawsuit against the company claims he was fired by Ms. Lieberman because "she had not received a requested breakdown of [his] duties," though he claimed to have "had already provided the very information" to her previously, according to the article.
"Mayer encouraged and fostered the use of [an employee performance rating system] to accommodate management's subjective biases and personal opinions, to the detriment of Yahoo's male employees," the lawsuit alleges.
Yahoo spokesperson Carolyn Clark defended the company's hiring practices in a statement.
"This lawsuit has no merit," said Ms. Clark. "With the unwavering support of our CEO, we are focused on hiring employees with broad and varied backgrounds and perspectives. Our performance review process was developed to allow employees at all levels of the company to receive meaningful, regular and actionable feedback from others."