The lawsuit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court by SpaceX engineer Ashley Foltz, who claims she hired at a salary of $92,000, though men with similar or lesser experience have been offered up to $115,000. According to her LinkedIn, Ashley hired September 2022 as a propulsion engineer. He did not promptly respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
According to the complaint, Foltz became aware of the pay gaps when a new California law requiring employers to offer pay diversity in their jobs went into effect. The salary diversity for his paintings ranges from $95,000 to $115,000. So SpaceX gave it a raise, but only to the lower end of diversity.
The lawsuit further alleges that job names, such as “technical writer” instead of “engineer 1,” were used as a way to compensate women and minorities. For example, those teams “are forced to present themselves as engineers under another name of ‘technical writer’ and are paid less,” the complaint states. Promotion rates also differ between women and minorities and their white and male peers, he says.
This isn’t the first time allegations of discriminatory hiring and promotion practices have been made at SpaceX. In August, the US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the company for allegedly discriminating against asylum seekers and refugees in hiring, under the guise of complying with export laws.