GoDaddy says internal probe shows it didn't send discriminatory email

Jim Walsh | The Arizona Republic

Show Caption Hide Caption GoDaddy denies calling job applicant obese Christian After an engineer was turned down for a job at GoDaddy, he read something else in the rejection email that shocked him. Keith Connolly claims an employee of the company referred to him as an "obeese (sic) Christian" to another employee.

GoDaddy defended itself Friday against allegations that it discriminated against a job applicant because of his weight and religion, releasing the results of its internal investigation in a blog post.

The blog post by Auguste Goldman, head of GoDaddy's People Operations Group, cited technical reasons to support the company's stance that it sent a standard rejection form letter to applicant Keith Connolly, but did not include an e-mail Connolly has said was attached to the rejection letter.

That e-mail, which Connolly shared with The Arizona Republic, read: "about keith he's great for the job skills but he looks worse for wear do we really want an obeese (sic) christian? is that what our new image requires of us.'.

The blog post said of the investigation, "The results clearly demonstrated that the alleged April 29, 2014, email was neither created, nor sent by, GoDaddy."

The post emphasizes the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company's inclusive culture and diversity, and GoDaddy representatives repeated their earlier comments that the e-mail was fabricated.

That contention, said Casey Yontz, Connolly's attorney, was tantamount to calling his client a liar.

In the blog post, GoDaddy said its investigation found that the offensive April 29, 2014, e-mail does not exist in Connolly's applicant profile, which is maintained by the company's recruiting-management software. It said the activity log on Connolly's profile does not record "any activity whatsoever'' on that date and that the job denial e-mail was a single, stand-alone e-mail with no attached e-mails.

GoDaddy said its recruiting management software vendor also searched its servers and found no record of the April 29 e-mail. In addition, the software does not allow a forwarded or attached message to be included in a form rejection e-mail, like the one received by Connolly, according to the post.

"Given all of this evidence, it remains GoDaddy's position that the alleged April 29 e-mail is not an authentic message,'' the company said on the blog.

Dan Race, vice president of communications for GoDaddy, said,"It's irrefutable that it was fabricated.''

Yontz said his client received only one e-mail from GoDaddy, which contained both the rejection letter and the attached e-mail. He said Connolly had nothing to gain financially from releasing the e-mail to the media because he was beyond the statute of limitations to sue GoDaddy for discrimination.

Connolly received the rejection e-mail on May 1, 2014, and said earlier this month that he did not notice the attached e-mail until months later, while cleaning out his archives. Yontz contacted GoDaddy about the attached e-mail after learning about it in April 2015.

Connolly's only motivation was to shine a spotlight on the matter in hopes that others would not be victimized for similar reasons, Yontz said.

"Keith is taking great personal risks in coming forward with this information because he believes what occurred was wrong,'' Yontz wrote in a statement.

Donna Eno, an engineer who operates D. Eno Forensics in Montana, said the original e-mail received by Connolly could be traced to identify who sent it. Until the original e-mail is traced, she said, it would difficult to know the truth.

"You can do it if you are a good software engineer,'' Eno said, when asked about the difficulty of creating a fake e-mail. "On the other hand, GoDaddy might have really screwed up.''