ERA Files Amicus Brief Supporting Former SpaceX Employees Suing SpaceX & Elon Musk for Sexual Harassment

February 25. 2026

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For Immediate Release
Feb 25, 2026

Media Contact
Nazirah Ahmad
[email protected]

National gender justice legal organization Equal Rights Advocates leads a coalition of civil rights advocates urging the Ninth Circuit to protect employees’ right to challenge workplace sexual harassment that affected them, whether or not they were direct targets of the harassing conduct

SAN FRANCISCO —  A coalition of gender justice and civil rights organizations today filed an amicus brief with the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in support of eight former SpaceX employees — women and men — who allege they were subjected to sexual harassment in their work environment and then fired in retaliation for speaking out against it. SpaceX is appealing a lower court ruling and seeking to force the case into private arbitration, arguing in part that employees who were not direct targets of harassment cannot bring hostile work environment claims.

The brief was filed by Equal Rights Advocates (ERA), along with co-amici the California Women’s Law Center, Legal Aid at Work, and the California Employment Lawyers Association.

The amicus brief addresses a number of SpaceX’s arguments by explaining that:

• An employer’s failure to respond effectively to harassment heightens hostile working conditions for employees.
• An employee need not be the direct target of harassment in order to state a hostile work environment claim under California or federal law.
• Social science research confirms that employees exposed to sexual harassment can experience significant psychological harm and adverse effects on their work environment, even when they are not directly targeted.
• Penalizing employees for trying to stop sexual harassment can deter future reporting and allows harassment to persist, undermining the goals of both FEHA and Title VII.

The eight plaintiffs, represented by Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP and Burgess Law Offices, P.C., allege that Elon Musk’s conduct created a pervasively hostile environment for SpaceX employees. They allege that, after the plaintiffs circulated an internal open letter in June 2022 urging management to address widespread gender harassment at the company, Musk personally ordered the letter’s authors to be fired. SpaceX fired four employees the next day and subsequently terminated four more after interrogating staff to identify other leaders of the effort.

The district court denied SpaceX’s motion to compel arbitration under the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021 (EFAA), a federal law that exempts sexual harassment disputes from forced arbitration agreements.

More information coming soon.