Three Amazon software engineers who spoke in favor of Seattle data center regulation say they are now facing possible discipline from their employer. Their complaint turns a local debate over AI infrastructure into a sharper question about worker speech, political advocacy, and corporate power.
What the Amazon employees say happened
Patrick Schloesser, Darius Irani, and Liesl Wigand testified earlier this month at Seattle City Council hearings about data centers. At the start of their testimony, they cited a city law that bars employment discrimination over political speech.
One week after the hearing, and one day after the City Council passed a milestone moratorium on data centers, the three employees were each called into an impromptu meeting with Amazon’s “Employee Relations.” According to the employees, HR representatives told them Amazon was investigating them and said disciplinary action could follow, up to and including termination.
On Thursday, the three filed a legal complaint asking the Seattle Office for Civil Rights to investigate. The complaint alleges that Amazon engaged in prohibited employment discrimination.
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Why Seattle’s data center moratorium matters
The dispute follows Seattle’s enactment of a one-year moratorium on large-scale data centers. The measure tables new proposals while council members consider legislation to award the city more benefits and request research on the effects of data centers.
The research areas named in the source include land use, public health, water use, jobs, utility rates, city infrastructure, and more. Those issues are central to the broader debate over AI and data center expansion: the facilities are physical infrastructure, not just software systems, and local governments are being asked to weigh who benefits and who bears the costs.
Earlier this month, many local residents attended Seattle City Council hearings in support of data center regulations and the moratorium. Five Amazon employees were among them, including Schloesser, Irani, and Wigand.
All five are members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, also known as AECJ. The group includes current and former employees focused on the climate crisis. Last year, AECJ published an open letter signed by more than 1,000 Amazon employees urging Amazon to power all its data centers with 100 percent additional, local renewable energy.
The HR meetings at the center of the complaint
Schloesser said he received a cold call over Zoom less than half an hour before a design review meeting. He said an HR representative asked about his whereabouts and what he had said at the City Council meeting.
He told The Verge he had a “foreboding sense that this is not a safe place for me.” He also said the representative appeared to be “trying to get me to admit to something,” especially because the call came without notice.
Schloesser recalled that the representative said he had violated Amazon’s corporate communications policy, which bans acting as a spokesperson for Amazon without preapproval. But Schloesser and the other employees who testified said they identified themselves by role and by membership in AECJ, not as a “software engineer at Amazon.”
After the meeting, Schloesser said he felt “kind of horrified.” He added: “We all harnessed this sense of indignation and anger that after everything we’ve gone through at this company, and after making a very uncontroversial statement where we’re simply exercising our rights to speak out politically as employees in the city of Seattle.”
Irani told The Verge he received an email from HR on June 9th with a calendar event for the next day to discuss a “confidential” matter. He said the representative asked about other Amazon employees who attended the City Council hearings and that he felt “they were waiting for me to admit I had done something wrong.”
Irani said he left the meeting rattled, then became angry after learning the other two AECJ members who testified had similar experiences. “I left this meeting feeling rattled and unsure of myself, but after speaking with the other two AECJ members who gave testimony, to find that they’d faced similar experiences, then I started feeling angry — because all I was doing was sharing my opinion that AI and data centers should be regulated,” he said.
The legal argument now being tested
The legal complaint alleges that Amazon violated Seattle law. It asks the Office for Civil Rights to “investigate these allegations and take all necessary action to remedy any unlawful discrimination committed by Amazon.”
Abby Lawlor, AECJ’s counsel and an attorney at Barnard Iglitzin & Lavitt, said in a statement that Seattle is “one of just a few jurisdictions in the country that prohibits private employers from discriminating against their employees based on the political beliefs they hold and the organizations they belong to.”
Lawlor said that protection gave AECJ members confidence to speak before the Seattle City Council in favor of local data center and AI regulation. She argued that the law prohibits “exactly what Amazon is doing now—investigating them and threatening their employment as a direct consequence of their advocacy.”
AECJ spokesperson Eliza Pan also framed the issue as an employment and democratic concern. “Amazon’s attempts to intimidate our members is an unfair and discriminatory employment practice,” Pan said in a statement. “It’s an abuse of our democracy and rule of law. Tech workers must be able to speak and act on their beliefs so that CEOs can’t just steamroll all of us to get what they want. Amazon can’t be allowed to intimidate its employees and we should all be worried if they succeed.”
What is at stake for AI infrastructure debates
The case sits at the intersection of AI infrastructure, city planning, and employee advocacy. The employees’ core position, as described in the source, is that AI and data centers should be regulated and that communities should have a say in how data center infrastructure is rolled out.
Irani said he has closely followed data center buildouts around the country. He said he believes, as many people testified at the City Council hearings, that the benefits are going mostly to tech companies and not locals.
“It really makes me upset how communities have been excluded and are facing so many consequences and harms from how this buildout has been done,” he said. “Communities should have a say in how [data center] infrastructure is rolled out. So I was proud to testify.”
The source also notes that two months before the Seattle City Council vote, four unknown companies had submitted proposals for five large-scale data centers within the city limits. Combined, the proposals would have had a maximum electricity demand equal to one-third of Seattle’s average use on a given day, and would use 10 times more power than the city’s current number of data centers.
For Seattle, the immediate issue is whether the Office for Civil Rights will investigate the employees’ allegations. For the wider tech industry, the dispute shows how the expansion of AI and data center infrastructure can create pressure not only on cities, utilities, and communities, but also inside the companies building and operating that infrastructure.