Controversies don’t seem to leave Elon Musk’s party any time soon. In a fresh lawsuit against Twitter, a female employee has brought forth yet another instance of gender discrimination within the company. She said that Musk tweeted ‘Testoeastorene rocks’ after he fired women from the team. The lawsuit, which was filed by a group of Twitter employees also highlighted that the women were fired just when they preparing to take family or parental leave.
As per Business Insider,former Twitter employees are taking legal action against Elon Musk, who owns the platform, claiming he discriminated against them based on their sex, race, and age. This group of seven ex-employees, who used to work for Twitter (now called X), were laid off in November 2022 due to significant job cuts that happened after Musk’s acquisition of the company earlier that year. The lawsuit was obtained by Insider and initially reported by Rolling Stone magazine.
The lawsuit asserts that some employees were let go while they were on family or medical leave, or while they were getting ready to take such leave. It also argues that the layoffs had a disproportionately negative impact on women, Black workers, and employees who were 50 years old or older.
The legal complaint points out that more women than men lost their jobs, which it attributes to Musk’s history of making offensive comments about women. The lawsuit gives examples of these derogatory remarks. The document highlights that shortly after the layoffs, on December 4, Musk tweeted about “Testosterone rocks, ngl,” referring to a tweet discussing James Cameron’s view on testosterone. Cameron had referred to it as a “toxin” that needs to be gradually eliminated from one’s system.
This isn’t the first time Elon Musk and his company X have faced allegations like this. In December 2022, two women who were laid off from Twitter claimed that the layoffs unfairly affected female employees more than male employees. However, a US District Judge dismissed this lawsuit in May, suggesting the plaintiffs should have first brought their concerns to federal agencies.
In March, Musk had to apologize to a former Twitter employee after wrongly accusing him of using his disability as an excuse for not working. Additionally, in April, Musk’s electric car company, Tesla, was ordered to pay $3.2 million in damages to a Black employee who had experienced racist abuse while working at the company’s Fremont plant.
As of now, representatives from company X have not yet responded to Insider’s request for a comment, which was sent outside of their regular business hours.
