SAN FRANCISCO - A group of hundreds of former Twitter employees over the age of 50 will be allowed to move ahead with an age discrimination collective action lawsuit against the company rebranded as X Corp., pressing claims they were wrongfully laid off en masse after billionaire Elon Musk took over the company in 2022.
On Aug. 28, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, agreed that plaintiffs, led by former Twitter employee John Zeman, had done enough to show they had a case that X Corp. managers had targeted older workers at a higher rate than others when the company laid off thousands of workers after Musk acquired Twitter.
The judge said Zeman and his lawyers had "shown beyond mere speculation that Twitter may have discriminated against older employees" during the large so-called "reduction in force" (RIF) layoffs, and that they had common enough claims to allow them to advance them together.
The lawsuit was filed in 2023, a few months after Musk completed his purchase of Twitter and slashed its workforce.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Zeman and a potential class of by attorneys Shannon Liss-Riordan and Bradley Manewith, of the firm of Lichten & Liss-Riordan P.C., of Boston.
Those lawyers also filed a similar, but separate action at the same time against Musk's X Corp. on behalf of female former workers, alleging X also discriminated against women employees when Musk ordered the RIF layoffs.
However, Judge Illston has shown herself to be more receptive to the age discrimination claims advanced by Liss-Riordan and her colleagues on behalf of Zeman and his former co-workers.
According to Zeman's lawsuit, Zeman was 63 and had worked in the communications department at Twitter for 11 years when X Corp.'s new management cut his job in November 2022 amid the RIF layoffs.
In all, the new managers installed by Musk reportedly eliminated more than 2,600 jobs at that time.
The lawsuit, however, asserts the layoffs disproportionately affected workers over the age of 50. According to the complaint, while Musk eliminated 56% of Twitter's workforce amid the 2022 RIF, 60% of those age 50 years or older lost their jobs. About 54% of workers under the age of 50 were laid off.
The lawsuit claims the alleged disparity is "statistically significant" and is evidence of alleged bias by Musk and his team against older workers.
They further point in the complaint to alleged "ageist" comments made by Musk elsewhere, including an interview in which he reportedly said people who "live for a really long time" would "cause asphyxiation of society" and would leave society "stuck with old ideas and society wouldn't advance."
The complaint asserts the company's layoffs violated the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act, as well as New York state anti-discrimination law.
The arguments were similar to those advanced on behalf of female ex-Twitter employees in the other lawsuit advanced by Liss-Riordan. In that action, they claimed 57% of workers who lost their jobs in the RIF were female, which they said was statistically unlikely and proof of bias.
They also presented alleged sexist statements made by Musk in the past to buttress their claims.
In the age discrimination claim, Zeman and his lawyers said they believe they should be allowed to press their claims on behalf of all workers over the age of 50 who lost their jobs in the 2022 Twitter RIF layoffs.
X Corp. said such a collective action should be rejected, because it would essentially sweep into one big pool a large number of people with differing claims, who worked different jobs, and may have been included in the RIF for differing reasons.
The company noted, for instance, that the RIF eliminated everyone in Twitter's communications department, in which Zeman was the only worker over the age of 50.
X Corp., for instance, noted that some workers received severance packages, under which they signed an agreement that the company said should force their claims into arbitration, blocking them from suing the company in court.
Judge Illston, however, said she believed Zeman and his former co-workers have enough in common to allow them to advance their claims together.
She said X Corp. will be allowed to present evidence in future proceedings to try to reduce the number of potential plaintiffs and perhaps to undo the collective action.
And the judge said she also wasn't bothered by other seeming differences, including the presence of arbitration clauses in severance deals. She asserted numerous other courts have similarly rejected attempts to use arbitration clauses to defeat collective actions.
"This Court similarly concludes that defendants’ assertion that some members of the putative collective action may ultimately be barred from joining this case by arbitration agreements does not prevent the Court from conditionally certifying a collective action at this notice stage," Illston wrote. "The Court further finds that these same principles should apply with respect to individuals who may have signed severance agreements that contained releases..."
She certified a collective action to include all Twitter employees in the U.S. age 50 and older who were laid off as part of the 2022 RIF "layoffs that occurred after Elon Musk acquired the company." The judge appeared to intentionally cite Musk's name and his acquisition of the company in her collective definition order.
Musk has drawn the ire of Democrats, particularly, since his acquisition of Twitter, which was launched after the former leadership of the company came under criticism for allegedly censoring conservative political posts from 2020-2022, eliminating posts, people and organizations from the social media platform who were critical or skeptical of government claims concerning the Covid pandemic and the 2020 elections. The alleged censorship included the removal of former President Donald Trump from Twitter in January 2021.
Illston is a senior judge in the Northern District of California. She was appointed by former President Bill Clinton in 1995.
X Corp. has been represented in the action by attorneys Eric Meckley, Brian D. Berry, Roshni C. Kapoor and Carolyn M. Corcoran, of the firm of Morgan Lewis & Bockius, of San Francisco and New York.