A federal judge in California on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit alleging that Elon Musk forced the social media platform X to stop hiring people with disabilities after he took control of the platform and banned employees from working from home.
U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Holguin in San Francisco said Dmitry Volodaenko, a plaintiff in a proposed class action lawsuit in 2022, had failed to prove how Musk’s return-to-the-office order specifically affected employees with disabilities. The judge gave him four weeks to file an amended lawsuit with more detailed allegations.
Volodaenko, a former engineering manager and cancer survivor, claims he was fired shortly after Musk acquired X and then called Twitter because he refused to come to work during the COVID-19 pandemic. The suit alleges that X violated federal law requiring employers to accommodate employees’ disabilities.
In a November 2022 memo to company staff, Musk said employees should be prepared to work “long hours and high intensity” or quit, before tweeting that working from home was “morally wrong.”
Governor Martinez Holguin said Wednesday that the ban on remote work does not constitute discrimination against people with disabilities.
“Vorodaenko’s theory relies on the false assumption that all employees with disabilities necessarily require remote work as a reasonable accommodation,” Martinez-Holguin wrote.
Mr. Volodaenko’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Company X responded to multiple requests for comment via email, “We’re busy right now, so please check back later.”
The lawsuit is one of several filed by former employees in the months after Musk bought the company for $44 billion and subsequently fired about 75% of his workforce.
Other lawsuits accuse Twitter of failing to give employees and contractors advance notice of terminations, failing to pay billions of dollars in promised severance packages, and unfairly targeting women and older workers for cuts. Company X denies any wrongdoing.
Some of these lawsuits have been dismissed and are pending appeal by the plaintiffs.
