US DOJ seeks to drop lawsuit accusing SpaceX of immigrant discrimination News
SpaceX-Imagery / Pixabay
US DOJ seeks to drop lawsuit accusing SpaceX of immigrant discrimination

US Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys have asked a federal court in Texas to end a temporary pause on a case accusing Elon Musk’s tech company SpaceX of discriminating against immigrant job applicants.

The DOJ’s motion to end the preliminary injunction — a temporary court order preventing one party from taking further legal action until the judge issues a final judgment — aims to lift the injunction within 30 days. Ending the pause would allow the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division to dismiss the case with prejudice, which would prevent the DOJ from filing the same lawsuit again in the future.

The motion, filed Thursday, comes after a year-long pause on a case initially brought by the DOJ against SpaceX in August 2023. The original complaint alleged that SpaceX had discriminated against asylees and refugees in online job posts and in statements made by SpaceX’s CEO and other officials. More specifically, the DOJ asserted that SpaceX discouraged immigrants from applying to jobs within the company, discriminated against applicants during the hiring process, and refused to hire applicants because of their nationality status. According to the complaint, SpaceX “wrongly” asserted that US export laws prevented the company from hiring anyone other than legal permanent residents or citizens. The DOJ contended that SpaceX’s discriminatory actions violated 8 USC § 1324b of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), noting that asylees and refugees qualify for legal permanent resident status under 8 USC § 1158(c)(l).

Musk responded to the allegations on his official X account in August 2023:

SpaceX was told repeatedly that hiring anyone who was not a permanent resident of the United States would violate international arms trafficking law, which would be a criminal offense. We couldn’t even hire Canadian citizens, despite Canada being part of NORAD! This is yet another case of weaponization of the DOJ for political purposes.

SpaceX filed a preliminary injunction in response to the complaint on November 2023, blocking the case from moving forward until the judge was able to review all evidence and issue a judgment. In its decision, the court determined that SpaceX would likely suffer “irreparable” harm if the court did not grant the injunction while the DOJ would not suffer that same harm.

The DOJ has not issued a statement as to why it moved to dismiss the case.

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