"Our investigation found that SpaceX failed to fairly consider or hire asylees and refugees because of their citizenship status."
The Biden administration’s Department of Justice has sued Elon Musk’s SpaceX, alleging that the space company discriminated against asylum seekers and refugees in hiring practices.
The lawsuit, which was filed on Thursday, claims that between 2018 and 2022, SpaceX "wrongly claimed" that export control laws limit the company’s hiring to US citizens and lawful permanent residents, according to CNBC.
The DOJ has reportedly been investigating Musk’s space company since June of 2020, when a non-US citizen filed a complaint with the department’s Immigration and Employee Rights Section.
"Our investigation found that SpaceX failed to fairly consider or hire asylees and refugees because of their citizenship status and imposed what amounted to a ban on their hire regardless of their qualification, in violation of federal law," said Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.
She added that the investigation found "SpaceX recruiters and high-level officials took actions that actively discouraged asylees and refugees from seeking work opportunities at the company."
The DOJ said that in data SpaceX provided, the company "hired only one individual who was an asylee and identified as such in his application" over nearly a four-year period and across more than 10,000 hires.
The DOJ is seeking to win "fair consideration and back pay for asylees and refugees who were deterred or denied employment at SpaceX due to the alleged discrimination" in addition to civil penalties and policy changes from SpaceX.
The investigation into the company was launched after Fabian Hutter complained that SpaceX had discriminated against him in a March 2020 interview for a technical strategy associate position when they asked about his citizenship status.
Hutter isn’t a US citizen, but rather a "lawful permanent [US] resident holding dual citizenship from Austria and Canada," a document filed by SpaceX in response to a subpoena from the DOJ in 2021 said.
Batya Ungar-Sargon, Newsweek. opinion editor, wrote on X: "First they shipped the jobs overseas, then they opened the border to mass immigration, now they sue companies that try to hire Americans."
Speaking in regards to the DOJ, she said, "these people just hate the American working class."
Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna announced on Thursday that she will be taking action to block funding to the DOJ that would go toward lawsuits against companies such as SpaceX by filing an amendment.
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