Elon Musk Targeted Women In Mass Twitter Layoffs, Class Action Lawsuit Alleges

The Daily Caller

Elon Musk Targeted Women In Mass Twitter Layoffs, Class Action Lawsuit Alleges

John Hugh DeMastri on December 8, 2022

UPDATE: This story has been updated to include a comment from Lichten & Liss-Riordan attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan.

Two former Twitter employees filed a class action lawsuit against the company Wednesday, alleging that it disproportionately targeted female employees at the behest of new owner and CEO Elon Musk, during mass layoffs in early November, according to court documents viewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of California, alleges that the aggressive cuts at Twitter, which targeted roughly half the company in early November, were done under “extremely hurried circumstances, with little if any regard given to employees’ job performance.” The plaintiffs estimate that across the company’s American workforce, roughly 57% of female employees were laid off, compared to roughly 47% of all male employees.


“Women at Twitter never had a decent shot at being treated fairly once Elon Musk decided to buy the company,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, an attorney at the Boston-based law firm Lichten & Liss-Riordan representing the plaintiffs, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.. “Instead, they had targets on their backs and regardless of their talent and contributions, they were at greater risk of losing their jobs than men. This is the fourth federal complaint we have filed against Musk’s Twitter and, because we know he thinks he is above the law, I don’t expect it to be the last.”


BREAKING: Twitter been sued for disproportionately firing female employees in November, where it reportedly laid off 57% of its female workers compared to 47% of men, per the lawsuit seen by Reuters.

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) December 8, 2022

Twitter employed 1,003 female engineers compared to 2,150 male engineers, before cutting 630 women and 1,037 men, a 63% and 48% cut respectively, according to the plaintiffs.  The plaintiffs allege that the disproportionate impact of layoffs on women was driven by Musk’s “discriminatory animus against women.”

Musk made the decision to implement longer work hours and cancel remote work knowing that it would “have a disproportionate impact on women, who are more often caregivers for children and other family members, and thus not able to comply with such demands,” the plaintiffs allege. Musk took advantage of this to “force more employees out of their jobs.”

Liss-Riordan launched an unsuccessful bid to become the Attorney General of Massachusetts this year, knocked out in the 2022 Democratic primary by former Boston City Council President Andrea Campbell despite an endorsement from Democratic Sen. Liz Warren of Massachusetts, according to the Boston Globe. Campbell would go on to defeat Republican Jay McMahon in the general election, according to the Associated Press.

Twitter did not immediately responded to a Daily Caller News Foundation request for comment.

Elon Musk Targeted Women In Mass Twitter Layoffs, Class Action Lawsuit Alleges

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