SpaceX lawsuit overview:
- Who: Plaintiff Ashley Foltz filed a lawsuit against Space Exploration Technologies Corp. d/b/a SpaceX.
- Why: SpaceX allegedly pays women and minorities less than their male counterparts and promotes them at lower rates in violation of California’s Equal Pay Act.
- Where: The SpaceX pay lawsuit was filed in the Superior Court for the State of California, County of Los Angeles.
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. d/b/a SpaceX allegedly pays women and minorities less than their white male counterparts, according to a SpaceX lawsuit filed Oct. 3 in California Superior Court.
Plaintiff Ashley Foltz says she was employed by SpaceX as an engineer from September 2022 through July 2019. When she was hired, she was offered a salary of $92,000 per year and was told that SpaceX would not increase the offer due to “fairness in strategy and peer comparisons,” according to the SpaceX lawsuit.
After Foltz was hired, California instituted a law requiring salary ranges to be posted on all job openings, the SpaceX lawsuit says. The salary band for her position at SpaceX was $95,000 to $115,000, at which point Foltz learned that she was actually being paid less than the lowest pay offered by SpaceX.
“Given the now public pay band, Defendants were forced to give her a raise–but still only paid her $95,000, the lowest tier of the salary band,” the SpaceX pay lawsuit says.
SpaceX lawsuit says company created ‘scheme’ to avoid scrutiny over SpaceX pay practices
Foltz notes that in 2018, white women earned just 79 cents to every dollar earned by men, and minority women experienced an even greater wage gap.
In response to the gender and minority wage gap, California passed an Equal Pay Act that prohibits an employer from paying employees less than those of the opposite sex for substantially similar work, the SpaceX lawsuit explains.
Although California’s Equal Pay Act designates four justifications for pay differentials, the SpaceX pay differential for women and minority employees does not fall into any of the categories, Foltz says.
Foltz claims SpaceX concocted a scheme to conceal their allegedly illegal pay practices from employees and avoid legal challenge. The SpaceX lawsuit says the company starts female and minority employees as technical writers before offering them engineering positions. Even though technical writers perform similar work to engineers, Foltz says they are paid substantially less.
Women and minority employees are allegedly offered a “promotion” to an engineering position only after working as technical writers for a few years, while white and male employees with similar experience are more likely to be hired as engineers.
The SpaceX lawsuit alleges women and minorities are offered promotions at lower rates than white and male employees, further impacting their ability to be paid equally to their white and male counterparts.
Foltz filed the SpaceX pay lawsuit on behalf of herself and a group of other women and minorities employed by SpaceX.
The U.S. Department of Justice recently filed a lawsuit against SpaceX over allegations it discriminated against asylees and refugees in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
What do you think about the allegations in the SpaceX lawsuit? Join the discussion in the comments!
Foltz is represented by Elliot J. Siegel, Julian Burns King, and Erum Siddiqui of King & Siegel LLP.
The SpaceX pay lawsuit is Ashley Foltz v. Space Exploration Technologies Corp. d/b/a SpaceX, Case No. 23STCV24097, in the Superior Court of the State of California, County of Los Angeles.
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