Courts

Sexual Discrimination Is Added To The List Of No-Nos Following Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover

People should have started being suspicious once folks got fired in order of bust size.

By Chris Williams on January 30, 2023 2:14 pm
Elon Musk

Wait, she works here? (Photo by Diego Donamaria/Getty Images for SXSW)

Elon Musk is currently facing charges for allegedly misleading his shareholders with tweets he made back in 2018. You shouldn’t take this as him being biased against his shareholders though — he appears to be an equal opportunity screwer-overer. This time, he is on the hook for allegedly discriminating against his former female employees when he started crashing down the ban hammer. From Reuters:

Twitter Inc (TWTR.MX) has asked a federal judge to toss out a proposed class action claiming the company targeted female employees during its recent mass layoffs, saying the plaintiffs failed to identify any actual discrimination.

Twitter said the December lawsuit fails to allege that company managers who decided which workers would lose their jobs used discriminatory criteria or made comments showing bias against women, in a filing in San Francisco federal court on Thursday.

Twitter laid off about 3,700 workers in November after the company was acquired by Elon Musk. The lawsuit claims the company axed 57% of its female workers compared to 47% of men.

I don’t know, 200 more women being fired than men in the great culling may not be de facto discriminatory action, but it does draw attention. I’m not so sure that the accusation can just be done away with with a shrug like Brett Farve allegedly stealing millions of dollars from welfare recipients. Employment law, after all, is nothing to game around with.

King Twit’s legal team responded with some terminal defense.

But the complaint “does nothing but quote a few stray tweets from Elon Musk that have no tie to the [layoffs] or any employment policy or practice at Twitter,” the company’s lawyers wrote in the motion.

Shannon Liss-Riordan, who represents the plaintiffs, said Twitter’s claims lack merit.

Considering that buddy is facing securities fraud based squarely in “a few square tweets,” I think that it is prudent to see said tweets before deciding they’re of no import. Let’s see a couple of ’em. Here, I’d advise you to think about what the acronym of the school would be:

Said tweet even carried with it a tongue-in-cheek reference to the 2018 securities fraud fodder:

This also isn’t the first time people have taken to Twitter to talk about Elon-related sexual harassment:

Yeah, the blue bird legal team is going to need a little more than jazz hands and distraction if they want to save whatever is left in those coffers. Yard sales and being behind on rent are enough financial trouble as it is.

“We have a very serious case of sex discrimination based on a combination of striking statistical disparities between the proportion of women and men who were laid off, as well as clearly biased views of the company’s new owner, Elon Musk,” Liss-Riordan said in an email.

Liss-Riordan has filed three other lawsuits against Twitter stemming from the layoffs, including claims that the company did not give workers the advance notice required by law and failed to pay promised severance.

For those who’d like to tee-hee at Musk’s crows coming to roost for his Twitter shenanigans, you can keep tabs on this story’s development by searching up Strifling v. Twitter Inc, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 4:22-cv-07739.

Twitter Asks Judge To Toss Out Proposed Sex Bias Class Action [Reuters]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by tweet at @WritesForRent.