A federal judge from San Francisco has ruled against Elon Musk’s X, and approved an initiative for 150 former employees to sue the company based on claims of age discrimination. The claims have been strenuously denied by X representatives and Musk himself.
Judge Susan Illston thought the 2022 firing of the entire communications department “presented a common question” about older employees. She suggested that the firings may have disproportionately impacted older workers. The plaintiff in the case, John Zeman, was a member of the comms team and sued the company last year suggesting that more than half of the laid off employees were over the age of 50.
Illston wrote that the plaintiff’s evidence suggested that the mass layoffs harmed older workers and thus allowed the lawsuit to proceed. X did not issue specific commentary on the ruling, but previously said that the entire division was laid off regardless of the ages of those employed.
There are dozens of lawsuits originating with Musk’s massive layoffs after he purchased the company. Given the political nature of the company and its CEO, one might infer that judges with particular biases may have ulterior motives at play in their rulings.
All of the lawsuits brought against X have been denied by the company. One lawsuit claimed they did not give sufficient advance notice of the layoffs, another suggested that females were disproportionately impacted or targeted, another claimed that the ban on remote work targeted the disabled.
The cases claiming discrimination against women and the disabled were both dismissed, but the judges allowed plaintiffs to refile if they amended their claims.
One lawsuit was dismissed entirely in July, lawyers representing former Twitter employees were seeking hundreds of millions in damages for severance pay.
