Two former employees of Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have filed two lawsuits against the billionaire couple and their several family-related corporate organizations.
The cases allege that family businesses are to blame for sexual harassment and discrimination among their employees. Zuckerberg and Chan are named as defendants in both lawsuits, which allege, among other things, that they failed to pay wages.
Mia King and an unknown man known only as John Doe are the plaintiffs. The lawsuits are not being brought against Facebook.
The cases, which were filed in San Francisco County Superior Court last month, were first reported on Tuesday by Insider, which has been covering the accusations for the past two years.
In an emailed statement, Ben LaBolt, a representative for the Zuckerberg-Chan family, claimed "independent multi-week examinations into the accusations" found that "these allegations could not be verified."
"We take allegations of workplace misconduct extremely seriously," LaBolt said, adding that the family office "investigates all such cases swiftly."
"Any complaint made to our HR professionals is taken seriously, investigated, and dealt with," LaBolt said. "We are proud of our family office team of professionals and are convinced that these claims, which seek to unfairly discredit our staff, will be dismissed."
Further queries were not answered by LaBolt.
According to court documents, King was a Black woman who worked as a "Security Operations Assistant" and was a member of the LGBTQ community. She worked for Limitless Specialty Services LLC, which offers security services to the Zuckerberg family, from 2018 to 2019.
Similarly, Doe, who is gay, worked for the family as the "Household Operations Manager" from 2017 to 2019.
In her 29-page lawsuit, King claims she was called "ghetto," a "b-," and a "c-," among other derogatory terms, as well as inappropriate comments about her breasts.
For his part, Doe claimed that the job required him to work more than 40 hours per week and more than eight hours per day for which he was never paid, and that he was compelled to work 17-hour days on multiple occasions to prepare a property prior to the Zuckerbergs' arrival for which he was not paid overtime.
