Former Workers Accuse SpaceX And Elon Musk Of Sex Harassment, Retaliation In Lawsuit

Eight former employees of SpaceX filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the company and CEO Elon Musk alleging sexual harassment, a hostile work environment and retaliation.

In a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles, the employees alleged that the way Musk ran his company resulted in “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.”

Despite Musk’s past promotion of a “no asshole” workplace policy and “zero tolerance” of sexual harassment at SpaceX, several examples of alleged sexual harassment were included in the lawsuit.

Plaintiff Paige Holland-Thielen, who was hired as an engineer in 2018, claimed that a higher-ranking engineer showed her a graph with data points pointing downward and made a “sexual allusion to an erect penis,” saying, “How can we get it up, up, up?”

Holland-Thielen reported the interaction to human resources but was fired before she could learn the outcome of the investigation or even if there had been one opened. The higher-ranking engineer remained in his role at the company.

Another plaintiff, Rebekah Clark, was hired as an engineer in 2021 and said she noticed immediately that the culture at SpaceX was “hostile to women and that the culture was fostered from the top down by Musk.” In the lawsuit, she alleged that male co-workers repeated “inappropriate, sexually charged Twitter comments” that Musk had made.

In a later meeting with management about the comments, Clark said she suggested that Musk clarify that his tweets were his own views and did not reflect the views of the company, the suit