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U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin in San Francisco
said the plaintiff in the 2022 proposed class action, Dmitry
Borodaenko, failed to show how Musk's mandate to return to the
office specifically impacted employees with disabilities. The
judge gave him four weeks to file an amended lawsuit including
more detailed claims.
Borodaenko, a former engineering manager and cancer survivor,
claims he was fired shortly after Musk acquired X, then called
Twitter, for refusing to report to the office during the
COVID-19 pandemic. The lawsuit claims X violated a federal law
requiring employers to accommodate workers' disabilities.
Musk said in a memo to the company's staff in November 2022 that
employees should be prepared to work "long hours at high
intensity" or quit, and later tweeted that it was "morally
wrong" to work from home.
Martinez-Olguin on Wednesday said the ban on remote work did not
amount to disability discrimination.
"Borodaenko’s theory improperly relies on the assumption that
all employees with disabilities necessarily required remote work
as a reasonable accommodation," Martinez-Olguin wrote.
A lawyer for Borodaenko did not immediately respond to a request
for comment.
X responded to multiple requests for comment with emails stating
"busy now, please check back later."
The lawsuit is one of several that former employees filed in the
months following Musk's $44 billion acquisition of the company
and the ensuing layoffs of about 75% of its workforce.
Other cases accuse Twitter of not giving employees and
contractors advance notice of layoffs, failing to pay billions
of dollars in promised severance, and disproportionately
targeting women and older workers for job cuts. X has denied
wrongdoing.
Some of those cases have been dismissed, prompting appeals from
the plaintiffs that are pending.
(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York, Editing by
Alexia Garamfalvi and David Gregorio)
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