Elon Musk’s Space X has sued Attorney General Merrick Garland and other members of President Joe Biden’s administration over the “unconstitutional” U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) complaint issued against the company last month.
The lawsuit filed last week comes after the DOJ alleged last month that SpaceX refused to hire people who were not U.S. citizens or green card holders. The DOJ said Musk’s company wrongly claimed federal laws prohibited them from hiring noncitizens.
However, SpaceX’s lawsuit challenges the legitimacy of DOJ administrative judges who hear cases involving employment bias against noncitizens. The lawsuit alleges these judgeships violate the Constitution because they are appointed by the attorney general, instead of being appointed by the president.
As the complaint states:
SpaceX has not engaged in any practice or pattern of discriminating against anyone, including asylees or refugees. To the contrary, SpaceX wants to hire the very best candidates for every job regardless of their citizenship status, and in fact has hired hundreds of noncitizens.
But aside from being factually and legally insupportable, the government’s proceedings are unconstitutional for at least four reasons: (1) the administrative law judge (ALJ) adjudicating the government’s complaint was unconstitutionally appointed; (2) the ALJ is unconstitutionally insulated from Presidential authority because she is protected by two layers of for-cause removal protections; (3) the ALJ is unconstitutionally purporting to adjudicate SpaceX’s rights in an administrative proceeding rather than in federal court; and (4) the ALJ is unconstitutionally denying SpaceX its Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial.
The lawsuit also cited a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruling that held the Securities and Exchange Commission’s administrative law judge scheme is unconstitutional, a decision the U.S. Supreme Court is set to review. The Supreme Court in Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy will determine the constitutionality of administrative law judges.
SpaceX hired zero refugees and one asylee between September 2018 and May 2022, the DOJ alleged.
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) pressed the DOJ for information regarding its lawsuit against SpaceX, as Breitbart News exclusively reported.
“I was surprised to learn that the United States Department of Justice is suing SpaceX for favoring American citizens in hiring,” Vance wrote in a letter to Garland. “It is difficult to separate this new DOJ investigation of SpaceX from the Biden administration’s other interactions with Mr. Musk.”
The case is Space Exploration Technologies v. Bell, No. 1:23-cv-00137 in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
Jordan Dixon-Hamilton is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at
