Hundreds of Facebook Inc. FB -2.20% employees have expressed outrage about a top global policy executive’s decision to support Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh by appearing at his hearing last week, people familiar with the matter said.
Employees raised the question directly to Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg as part of his weekly question-and-answer session last Friday, the people said. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg also weighed in on the controversy in an internal discussion thread that has so far drawn hundreds of comments.
Mr. Zuckerberg said Friday that he wouldn’t have made the same decision but the appearance didn’t violate Facebook policies.
Employees began expressing anger, confusion and frustration after an image of Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s head of global policy, surfaced in the middle of Judge Kavanaugh’s lengthy hearing last Thursday. Over the last week, the topic has drawn hundreds of comments in internal threads, the people familiar with the discussion said.
“I’ve talked to Joel about why I think it was a mistake for him to attend given his role in the company,” Ms. Sandberg wrote, according to a copy of the post reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “We support people’s right to do what they want in their personal time but this was by no means a straight-forward case.”
Mr. Kaplan is a close friend of Judge Kavanaugh’s.
Facebook is planning to hold a town hall meeting with senior executives, including Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg, to hear and address employee concerns on Friday, people familiar with the company said.