The Department of Justice under the Biden administration has filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk's SpaceX, alleging that the company engaged in discriminatory hiring practices against asylum seekers and refugees.
The lawsuit, which was filed on Thursday, claims that between 2018 and 2022, SpaceX falsely asserted that export control laws limited their hiring to U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents.
According to CNBC, the DOJ has been investigating SpaceX since June 2020, following a complaint filed by a non-U.S. citizen with the department's Immigration and Employee Rights Section. Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, stated that their investigation revealed that SpaceX failed to fairly consider or hire asylees and refugees based on their citizenship status, in violation of federal law.
Clarke further noted that SpaceX recruiters and high-level officials took actions that actively discouraged asylees and refugees from seeking employment opportunities at the company.
In the data provided by SpaceX, the DOJ found that the company had hired only one individual who was an asylee and had identified as such in their application over a period of nearly four years and across more than 10,000 hires.
The DOJ's lawsuit seeks to obtain fair consideration and back pay for asylees and refugees who were deterred or denied employment at SpaceX due to the alleged discrimination. Additionally, the department is pursuing civil penalties and policy changes from the company.
The investigation into SpaceX was initiated following a complaint by Fabian Hutter, who claimed that the company had discriminated against him during a March 2020 interview for a technical strategy associate position by inquiring about his citizenship status. Hutter, a lawful permanent resident with dual citizenship from Austria and Canada, is not a U.S. citizen.
In response to the lawsuit, Batya Ungar-Sargon, opinion editor at Newsweek, expressed a conservative viewpoint, stating, "First they shipped the jobs overseas, then they opened the border to mass immigration, now they sue companies that try to hire Americans."
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