SpaceX and Elon Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.
Fired SpaceX engineers have filed a sexual harassment and retaliation lawsuit against Elon Musk in California state court, escalating their multi-pronged legal battle with the billionaire CEO and his aerospace company.
“Musk knowingly and intentionally created an undesirable hostile work environment based on his conduct of workplace intrusions of sexually explicit photos, memes and comments demeaning women and/or the LGBTQ+ community,” the eight former employees, who have also pursued a case of the US labor board against the company, said in their filing on Wednesday. The plaintiffs allege that some of them then experienced harassing comments from other colleagues that “mimicked Musk’s tweets” from Twitter and “created an extremely unpleasant hostile work environment.”
After Musk publicly mocked allegations of misconduct against him, workers collaborated on an open letter in 2022, raising concerns about his behavior and the company’s culture, and alleging they were fired in retaliation. Their filing says they have reason to believe Musk personally made the decision to terminate them in retaliation for that activism. When a human resources official suggested launching an investigation, Musk replied, “I don’t care — fire them,” the complaint states.
SpaceX and Elon Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit. SpaceX has previously denied wrongdoing and said the fired employees violated policies. He also said Musk was not involved in their termination.
This lawsuit against Musk follows earlier complaints by the same employees to the US National Labor Relations Board that said SpaceX unlawfully retaliated against them. NLRB prosecutors agreed, but SpaceX sued in January, claiming the agency’s structure was unconstitutional. An appeals court order has put the labor board case on hold.
Separately, on Tuesday the Wall Street Journal reported allegations that Musk made sexual advances to women at SpaceX, including a former intern with whom he had sex. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell was quoted in the story accusing the Journal of presenting “falsehoods, mischaracterizations and revisionist history” and saying “Elon is one of the nicest people I know.”
The NLRB lacks the authority to hold individuals accountable, but the new state court lawsuit names Musk personally as a defendant, citing what it calls his “maniacal control over personnel decisions at his businesses” and his public comments, such as joking on Twitter about a misconduct charge, “if you touch my vagina, you can have a horse.” Musk has denied wrongdoing.
The lawsuit also alleges that SpaceX executives, including Musk and Shotwell, participated in a video that “mocks and disparages sexual misconduct and jokes,” including a scene in which an employee demonstrated the “correct” way to hit a colleague.
The previously fired employees brought some of their claims to the California Department of Civil Rights, Bloomberg News reported in February. That agency issued them “right to sue” letters this week clearing the way for them to file their lawsuit, according to the complaint.
“We have to pursue every avenue we can to continue to advance our claims,” plaintiff Tom Moline, who worked on SpaceX’s Dragon program, said in an interview. “Even Elon, with all his wealth and power, isn’t above being held accountable, is he?”
(Other than the headline, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and was published by a shared source.)
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