During the company's massive layoffs in November 2022, management used discriminatory grounds when firing workers.
A federal judge in San Francisco has ruled that about 150 workers laid off from social media platform X after Elon Musk acquired the company can file a class action lawsuit age discrimination claim. If Elon Musk's company is found guilty in court, it will have to pay millions of dollars in compensation to the fired employees.
This is reported by Reuters.
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said in a ruling released late Tuesday, September 3, that the company's 2022 policy led to the mass discriminatory firing of workers aged 50 and older.
Plaintiff John Zeman, who worked in the communications department of X (then Twitter), filed a lawsuit in 2023, in which he said the media platform fired 60% of employees aged 50 and older and nearly three-quarters of those over 60, compared with 54% of younger employees age.
“Plaintiff has demonstrated that it goes beyond mere speculation that Twitter may have discriminated against older employees on November 4, 2022 (the mass layoff), which is a single decision affecting all members of the proposed class,” Judge Illston wrote.
Tuesday's ruling allows Zeman's lawyers to serve notice of the lawsuit on potential class members and give them the opportunity to join the lawsuit as class plaintiffs.
The publication notes that Elon Musk's company denies discriminating against older workers and says it has completely disbanded the communications department where Zeman worked, regardless of the age of the employees.
Lawyer Shannon Liss-Riordan, who represents Zeman and About 2,000 other former Twitter employees who have filed a series of lawsuits against the company said they were satisfied with the ruling.
Zeman's lawsuit is one of nearly a dozen others filed against X over Musk's decision to fire more than half of Twitter's employees in 2022.
The cases all raise various claims against the company, which it denies. In particular, X is accused of bias in dismissing women and people with disabilities, violating workers' rights by banning remote work and firing without notice, and failing to pay severance pay.
Former SpaceX employees are suing Musk for systematic humiliation. Elon Musk deliberately and intentionally created an unpleasant hostile work environment by posting disgusting and degrading sexual photos, memes and comments in the workplace, former employees say.
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