A federal judge says a group of female former Twitter employees still haven't shown the company now known as X Corp. discriminated against them and other female workers by laying them off amid reductions in force ordered by Elon Musk shortly after he acquired Twitter in 2022.
On Aug. 26, U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar, of the Northern District of California court, again granted the motion from X to dismiss the sex discrimination class action lawsuit filed by the female former Twitter workers.
In the ruling, Judge Tigar said the female plaintiffs couldn't prove that Twitter managers allegedly acted at Musk's direction to discriminate against female employees while cutting loose thousands of employees after Musk bought the company.
The lawsuit was filed in San Francisco federal court in 2022 by named plaintiffs Carolina Bernal Strifling and Willow Wren Turkal, soon after the layoffs occurred. The plaintiffs are represented by attorneys Shannon Liss-Riordan and Thomas Fowler, of the firm of Lichten & Liss-Riordan P.C., of Boston.
The plaintiffs seek to expand the action to include a class of potentially more than 1,200 female former Twitter workers who lost their jobs amid reductions in force (RIF) layoffs ordered by Musk.
According to the lawsuit, the RIF action launched on Nov. 4, 2022, at Musk's direction resulted in more than 2,600 layoffs. Of these, 57% of the layoffs were of female employees.
The lawsuit asserts such a margin is allegedly highly unlikely statistically without some kind of discriminatory animus against women.
According to the lawsuit, the decisions were made "hurriedly ... with little if any regard given to employees' job performance, qualifications, experience or abilities."
They assert the female job losses were more pronounced among Twitter's engineers, where 59% of the layoffs were among female engineers.
They assert the alleged disparity was driven by a preference for male employees, which was allegedly driven by Musk's own preferences and public statements.
They pointed to statements made by Musk, including crude jokes about how using the letters of Twitter's name to spell "TITS" and Musk's statements posted to Twitter that said: "Being a Mom is just as important as any career" and "Testosterone rocks ngl," a shorthand for "not gonna lie."
They also pointed to Musk's decision in April 2023 to paint white the "w" in the sign on Twitter's corporate headquarters, allegedly making the company's name appear to be "Titter."
The plaintiffs accused Musk and X Corp. of violating both federal and California state anti-discrimination laws.
Tigar has tossed the case once before, but allowed the plaintiffs to amend their case and try again to address legal shortcomings identified in the prior ruling.
But in the new ruling, Judge Tigar said they still fall short.
While the judge agreed the numbers provided by plaintiffs "provide a significant statistical disparity," he said they still haven't been able to show the named plaintiffs were even actually involved in the RIF action.
This, he said, torpedoes their claims, unless they can show otherwise.
"First, as the Court previously noted, Plaintiffs fail to allege that they suffered an adverse employment action," Tigar said. "While Plaintiffs allege they worked for X until November 2022 and detail the layoffs that occurred that month, they never allege they were subject to these layoffs.
"Second, assuming Plaintiffs were terminated, they still have not included enough factual allegations to plausibly infer they were laid off due to their sex. For example, the amended complaint does not allege anything about the comparative qualifications, experience, job performance, or abilities of any male employees who were not laid off to suggest that similarly situated men were treated more favorably."
The judge also said Musk's statements are not enough to prove "X engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination."
"... Musk's stray remarks, unrelated to the employment decision at issue, do not support the plausible inference that discriminatory animus influenced the manager's layoff decisions," Tigar wrote.
Despite the continued shortcomings, the judge said the dismissal was again without prejudice and he gave the plaintiffs 21 days to file a new complaint that fixes the perceived problems.
X has been represented in the action by attorneys Eric Meckley, Brian D. Berry, Roshni C. Kapoor, Ashlee N. Cherry and Kassia Stephenson, of the firm of Morgan Lewis & Bockius, of San Francisco and Palo Alto.