Elon Musk Sued for Alleged Sexual Harassment at SpaceX

Elon Musk has once again made headlines, this time for a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by ex-employees at his SpaceX private rocket company.

NBC News is reporting that eight employees are suing the Tesla founder, accusing him of personally firing him after he was confronted about allegedly tolerating sexual harassment in the workplace. The eight employees claim that their firing came in 2022 after they circulated an open letter in which they accused Elon Musk of exhibiting “behavior in the public sphere [that] is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment.”

The lawsuit further alleged that Musk “runs his company in the dark ages — treating women as sexual objects to be evaluated on their bra size, bombarding the workplace with lewd sexual banter, and offering the reprise to those who challenge the ‘Animal House’ environment that if they don’t like it they can seek employment elsewhere.”

The employees cited at least 20 posts that Musk made on X, formerly known as Twitter, that made references to male genitalia and all but openly encouraged sexually inappropriate behavior in the workplace amongst rank-and-file employees.

“Musk thinks he’s above the law. Our eight brave clients stood up to him and were fired for doing so,” Laurie Burgess, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in a statement. “We look forward to holding Musk accountable for his actions at trial.”

In an article The Wall Street Journal published describing the accusations of many of the former employees, SpaceX president and COO, Gwynne Shotwell, defended Musk and the company, stating that SpaceX thoroughly investigates all harassment complaints and takes necessary actions. She told the WSJ that “Elon is one of the best humans I know” and that its reporting painted “a completely misleading narrative.”

The eight firings were already in the eye of the federal government after the terminated employees brought a complaint to the National Labor Relations Board, which accused Musk of violating federal law. In response, SpaceX filed a lawsuit against the National Labor Relations Board, claiming that its efforts are unconstitutional. Both the lawsuit and the investigation are still pending.

News of the lawsuit against Elon Musk comes just one day after the controversial billionaire made a motion to drop his lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman, which he filed after claiming that ChatGPT had given up on its original altruistic objective in favor of keeping some of its most advanced AI technology private. In addition to demanding a jury trial, the lawsuit sought Altman’s and the business’s president, Greg Brockman, to reimburse them for whatever profits they may have earned.