The Justice Department on Thursday sued Elon Musk’s SpaceX, alleging that the company routinely discriminated against refugees and asylum seekers in its hiring process.
According to the lawsuit, SpaceX officials said on numerous occasions between 2018 and last year that it could hire only U.S. citizens and green-card holders because of restrictive export control laws governing the use of rocket and missile technology.
The government cited several cases in which the company made this assertion publicly and listed citizenship as a requirement in job postings, even though “export control laws impose no such hiring restrictions.”
“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,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.
“Our investigation also found that SpaceX recruiters and high-level officials took actions that actively discouraged asylees and refugees from seeking work opportunities at the company.”
CNN reports that SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment. SpaceX officials have for years asserted in interviews that its hiring practices were dictated by the requirements of a federal law known as the International Traffic in Arms Regulation.
Like many rocket companies, SpaceX takes ITAR seriously. It closely guards access to its manufacturing facilities and limits what outside photographers and videographers can shoot for fear of sensitive designs being made public.
According to the report, the work SpaceX and other space companies do is so sensitive that recently the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, the FBI and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations issued a joint bulletin about foreign intelligence threats to the U.S. space industry.
The lawsuit says that, according to SpaceX data, the company hired only one person out of more than 10,000 hires “who was an asylee and identified as such in his application.” SpaceX made that hire, the lawsuit asserts, about four months after the Immigrant and Employee Rights Section at the Justice Department had notified the company of its investigation.
The lawsuit notes that SpaceX hires for “a wide variety of positions” including “welders, cooks, crane operators, information technology specialists, software engineers, dishwashers, business analysts, rocket engineers, marketing professionals, baristas, and more.”
