Google faces a new lawsuit accusing it of gender-based pay discrimination.
A lawyer representing three female former Google employees is seeking class action status for the claim.
The suit, filed on Thursday (US time) in San Francisco Superior Court, follows a federal labour investigation that made a preliminary finding of systemic pay discrimination among the 21,000 employees at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California.
The initial stages of the review found women earned less than men in nearly every job classification.
Google disputes those findings and says its analysis shows no gender pay gap.