A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon spacecraft sits on Launch Complex 39A after its launch was scrubbed on the Kennedy Space Center on Friday in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

Eva Marie Uzcategui/Getty Images

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Eva Marie Uzcategui/Getty Images

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon spacecraft sits on Launch Complex 39A after its launch was scrubbed on the Kennedy Space Center on Friday in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

Eva Marie Uzcategui/Getty Images

The Justice Department is suing Space X, accusing the Elon Musk-founded firm of discriminating in opposition to refugees and asylum seekers within the hiring course of.

The division alleges within the lawsuit filed Thursday that between September 2018 and May 2022, SpaceX violated the Immigration and Nationality Act by discouraging refugees and asylum recipients to use for out there positions of their advertising and marketing supplies, rejecting or refusing to rent them and hiring solely U.S. residents and everlasting residents.

SpaceX additionally falsely claimed it couldn’t rent non-U.S. residents due to export management legal guidelines, the Justice Department mentioned.

In a reply posted to X, previously referred to as Twitter, Musk known as the lawsuit “yet another case of weaponization of the DOJ for political purposes.”

“SpaceX was told repeatedly that hiring anyone who was not a permanent resident of the United States would violate international arms trafficking law, which would be a criminal offense,” Musk mentioned within the put up.

SpaceX builds and launches rockets, which limits its capability to export sure applied sciences and software program below export management legal guidelines such because the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR) and the Export Administration Regulations (EAR).

However, “asylees’ and refugees’ permission to live and work in the United States does not expire, and they stand on equal footing with U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents under export control laws,” the division mentioned in an announcement.

The DOJ says Musk posted on X — which he now owns — that “US law requires at least a green card to be hired at SpaceX, as rockets are considered advanced weapons technology.”

It additionally alleges that in postings SpaceX placed on job searching websites and on-line boards, SpaceX workers specified out there positions had been solely open to U.S. residents. On functions, potential workers needed to verify a field indicating their citizenship standing, which was then enter right into a database that managers and recruiters marked with rejection codes, equivalent to “not authorized to work/ITAR ineligible,” “does not meet basic qualifications” and “not U.S. citizen/green card.”

Rejected candidates with asylum or refugee standing had apt expertise for the roles, together with one one who graduated from Georgia Tech University and had 9 years of engineering expertise and one other who the hiring supervisor mentioned had “some impressive experience listed,” the Justice Department mentioned in its lawsuit.

Out of about 10,000 hires between 2018 and 2022, just one particular person was an asylee and none had been refugees, the Justice Department mentioned.

The Justice Department is in search of to have SpaceX pay civil penalties decided by a choose, rent the candidates who had been certified however rejected due to their citizenship standing and provides again pay to those that had been discriminated in opposition to.