The Department of Justice on Thursday filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk’s SpaceX, accusing its management of discriminating against refugees and asylum seekers during hiring. The suit alleges that the company “actively discouraged” refugees and asylum seekers from applying for jobs and “refused” to hire foreign nationals who lived in the U.S. despite them being qualified. Specifically, the DOJ alleges that SpaceX “wrongly claimed” between 2018 and 2022 that export control laws limited it to hiring only U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents. That was not true, however, and the DOJ now argues SpaceX’s hiring practices put it in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The lawsuit asks a judge to award “fair consideration and back pay for [asylum-seekers] and refugees who were deterred or denied employment at SpaceX due to the alleged discrimination,” in addition to civil penalties and ordering policy changes at SpaceX.
