A new lawsuit (PDF) filed against flailing tech giant Yahoo claims that company managers governing the "Media Org" were biased against men. It also claims that the company's Quarterly Performance Review (QPR) process favored female employees and that the company engaged in mass layoffs without proper warnings.

Gregory Anderson was editorial director of Yahoo's Autos, Homes, Shopping, Small Business, and Travel sections until he was terminated in 2014.

In his complaint, Anderson says that between 2012 and 2015, Yahoo reduced its work force by more than 30 percent to fewer than 11,000 employees. That constitutes a mass-layoff, which requires 60-day notice under state and federal law, he says.

In May 2014, Anderson was selected for a Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellowship at the University of Michigan. Two Yahoo executives signed off on his attending the fellowship, where he was "working on a documentary for Yahoo Autos about the toxic effects of leaded gasoline on children," according to the complaint.

In November 2014, Anderson was told he was being terminated during the middle of the fellowship. His review performance placed him among the lowest five percent of Yahoo's employees, all of whom were being fired, his supervisor told him.

Anderson also says his supervisors, in particular Chief Marketing Officer Kathy Savitt, favored female workers. When Savitt began at Yahoo, top managers in the "Media Org" were less than 20 percent female, the complaint states. Three years later, they were more than 80 percent female.

"Savitt has publicly expressed support for increasing the number of women in media and has intentionally hired and promoted women because of their gender, while terminating, demoting or laying off male employees because of their gender," writes Anderson's lawyer.

He alleges that female employees were more often allowed to leave voluntarily and were given time to find new employment, while males were more often fired.

In Yahoo's QPR process, employees are given a ranking between 0.0 and 5.0 and then placed into "buckets" labeled "Greatly Exceeds," "Exceeds," "Achieves," Occasionally Misses," and "Misses."

Anderson says that although his offer letter specified his employment was "at will, he says "it did so dismissively, as if a mere perfunctory obligation, and it introduced the subject with the phrase 'We interrupt this fantastic offer with a word from our lawyers.'" The offer letter included language like "You'll be investing your time with us, and we are ready to invest in you." It had the cumulative effect of leading Anderson to believe he wouldn't be terminated "without some just reason honestly held."

The complaint, filed in federal court in the Northern District of California, alleges gender discrimination and "termination in violation of public policy."

The lawsuit, first reported by The New York Times, comes at a time when employee ranking systems are under increased scrutiny. Amazon's "stack ranking" system came under the microscope last year after a critical NYT piece on the company's employment practices. General Electric and Microsoft have abandoned such systems "because of their corrosive effect on productivity and employee morale," the newspaper reports.

In an e-mailed response to Ars' inquiry about the lawsuit, Yahoo spokesperson Suzanne Philion said that "fairness is a guiding principle" for reviews, which were developed to allow employees "to receive meaningful, regular, and actionable feedback from others."

"We believe this process allows our team to develop and do their best work," she added. "Our performance review process also allows for high performers to engage in increasingly larger opportunities at our company, as well as for low performers to be transitioned out."

The statement sent to Ars didn't mention the plaintiff's $5 million demand letter sent in January, which Philion did flag to a Bloomberg reporter yesterday.

"Yes, we itemized the damages at $5 million," Anderson’s lawyer, Jon Parsons, told Bloomberg. "They are posturing. When you don’t have anything substantive to say about the facts, you try to discredit the plaintiff."