Eight former employees have filed a lawsuit against SpaceX and its CEO, Elon Musk, alleging that sexual harassment was rampant at the company and that Musk ordered them fired for objecting to a hostile, “Animal House”-style work environment.
The employees, who filed the lawsuit in California court, detailed their grievances in an open letter to management in 2022 and shared it on the company's intranet. Four of the plaintiffs were fired the next day, and the others were subsequently fired following an internal investigation, the employees allege.
In January, the U.S. National Labor Relations Board filed its own complaint against SpaceX based on issues raised by nine fired employees.
Among other workplace concerns, the open letter called on executives to condemn Musk's public behavior on Platform X, then known as Twitter, and to hold all employees accountable for unacceptable behavior, including downplaying sexual harassment allegations against him, which he denies.
“As our CEO and most visible spokesperson, Elon is considered the face of SpaceX and every tweet he sends is effectively an official statement from our company,” the open letter said at the time. It also noted that Musk's behavior was “frequently a source of distraction and embarrassment.”
The plaintiffs are seeking unspecified monetary damages.
The complaint linked Musk's behavior, particularly his lewd Twitter posts, to SpaceX's working conditions.
One of the plaintiffs, Yaman Abdulhak, said in a statement that many of the inappropriate examples cited in a 2021 “appropriate conduct” employee training “suffered a striking similarity to the content of Musk's tweets.”
Abdulhak sent examples of those tweets to SpaceX's human resources director, who took no action, according to the lawsuit.
SpaceX did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
