Following this morning’s Supreme Court decision to quash Roe v. Wade, Google has informed its U.S. employees that they can move “without justification.”
On Friday morning, the Supreme Court issued a new ruling ending the protection of the right to abortion in the United States, leaving it up to the states to decide. In turn, some states had prepared “trigger bans,” which will ban abortions in these areas in the coming days, or in some cases immediately.
In response to this ruling, reports The Verge, Google People Director Fiona Cicconi sent an email to all U.S. employees, informing them of the ways in which the company can be useful to both the its staff as for the public.
For employees and their dependents, Google’s health benefits may “cover out-of-state medical procedures.” The company also allows workers to move to a new state “without justification”. It is unclear at this time whether this relocation policy is new or existing.
The message also speaks of Google’s intention to “make reproductive health information accessible” while protecting people’s privacy.
You can read the full email, provided by The Verge, below.
Hello everybody,
This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in Dobbs v.
This is a profound change for the country that deeply affects many of us, especially women. Everyone will respond in their own way, whether they want space and time to process, talk, volunteer outside of work, not want to talk about it at all, or something else entirely. Please consider what your co-workers may feel and, as always, treat each other with respect.
Equity is extraordinarily important to us as a company and we share concerns about the impact this ruling will have on people’s health, lives and careers. We will continue to work to make reproductive health information accessible to our products and will continue to work to protect users’ privacy.
To support Googlers and their dependents, our U.S. benefit plan and health insurance cover out-of-state medical procedures that are not available where an employee lives and works. Googlers can also request the transfer without justification, and those who oversee this process will be aware of the situation. If you need additional support, connect 1: 1 with a people consultant using [link to internal tool redacted].
We will be hosting assistance sessions for Googlers in the US over the next few days. These will be published in Google News.
Please feel free to lean on your Google community for the next few days and continue to take good care of each other.
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