A federal judge in San Francisco has once more dismissed a class action lawsuit alleging that Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, unfairly targeted female employees during the massive layoffs that followed Musk’s acquisition of the company, formerly known as Twitter.
U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar’s written ruling highlighted that it remains unclear whether the two named plaintiffs in the 2022 lawsuit were actually laid off alongside thousands of others or if they departed Twitter for different reasons. Moreover, the judge emphasized that even if they were laid off, the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that their gender was a driving factor.
“The amended complaint does not provide any evidence regarding the qualifications, experience, job performance, or abilities of male employees who were not laid off to suggest that similarly situated men were treated more favorably,” Tigar wrote.
This marks the second dismissal of the case by Tigar, who has given the plaintiffs an additional three weeks to revise their claims with more specific details.
A lawyer representing the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment, while X’s response to inquiries was a curt, “busy now, please check back later.”
This lawsuit is one of several filed by former employees in the wake of Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, which led to the layoffs of approximately 75% of its workforce. Other lawsuits accuse the company of failing to provide advance notice of layoffs, withholding billions in promised severance pay, and systematically pushing out workers. X has denied any wrongdoing, and some cases have been dismissed, with appeals still pending.
In the current case, the plaintiffs claimed that about 58% of Twitter’s female engineers were laid off, compared to around 45% of male engineers, after Musk’s takeover. They also cited allegedly sexist comments made by Musk. However, Judge Tigar pointed out that these comments were unrelated to the layoffs, which were executed by individual managers, not Musk. He also dismissed comparisons to a separate age discrimination case where the plaintiff provided specific allegations of being laid off despite performing as well as or better than younger colleagues.
“Plaintiffs fail to make such allegations here,” Tigar concluded.
The case, Strifling v. Twitter Inc, continues in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California under case number 4:22-cv-07739.
