Judge "prepared to approve" Activision Blizzard's $18m sexual harassment settlement with EEOC

eurogamer.net:

A US district court judge has confirmed they're «prepared to approve» Call of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard's $18m USD settlement of a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last year, despite objections from other parties.

Activision Blizzard initially announced it had reached an agreement with the EEOC — to set aside $18m for employees who had experienced harassment and discrimination at the company — last September, but court approval of the settlement was delayed after California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing objected.

In that objection, the DFEH — which had filed its own bombshell lawsuit against Activision Blizzard in July last year, calling the publisher a «breeding ground for harassment and discrimination against women» — claimed the settlement would cause «irreparable harm» to its own ongoing legal proceedings if approved, given that its terms would, among other things, require employees to release Activision Blizzard from claims under California state law.

«DFEH's pending enforcement action against Defendants will be harmed by uninformed waivers that the proposed decree makes conditional for victims to obtain relief,» it wrote at the time. «The proposed consent decree also contains provisions sanctioning the effective destruction and/or tampering of evidence critical to the DFEH's case, such as personnel files and other documents referencing sexual harassment, retaliation and discrimination.»

Despite the DFEH's objection — which later resulted in a messy tussle with the EEOC — a US district court judge (as reported by the Washington Post) has now said they're «prepared to approve» the settlement, writing, «The Court is generally satisfied that both the