Elon Musk wins court victory in a dispute over a 2018 post during a labor dispute
NEW ORLEANS– A federal agency wrongly ordered Tesla CEO Elon Musk to delete a post Social media post 2018 that union leaders saw as a threat to workers’ stock options, a sharply divided federal appeals court has ruled.
The case involved a post on what was then known as Twitter during United Auto Workers organizing efforts at a Tesla factory in Fremont, California. The post was made years before Musk bought the platform, now known as Xin 2022.
On May 20, 2018, Musk tweeted: “Nothing is stopping the Tesla team at our car factory from voting to unionize. Could do this if they wanted to. But why pay union dues and give up stock options for nothing? Our safety record is 2x better than when the plant was UAW & everyone already gets health care.”
The National Labor Relations Board said it was an illegal threat. After Tesla appealed, three judges of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans upheld that decision, as well as a related NLRB order that Tesla rehire a fired employee with back pay.
But Tesla sought a rehearing, and the full 5th Circuit later overruled the earlier decision and voted to rehear the case. In an opinion issued Friday, the justices were split 9-8 in favor of Tesla and Musk.
“We believe that Musk’s tweets are constitutionally protected speech and do not fall into the categories of unprotected communications such as obscenity and perjury,” the unsigned opinion said.
The majority also found that the NLRB should reconsider its order to reinstate the fired employee because there was no evidence that the person who fired the employee acted out of ill will toward the union.
The eleven-page opinion was followed by a thirty-page dissent on behalf of eight justices, written by Judge James Dennis.
“Relevant here is that the Supreme Court has consistently held that the First Amendment does not protect threatening, coercive statements made by employers toward employees in the election context of labor organizations – the precise category of statements that Musk spread via Twitter,” Dennis wrote.
He also argued that the attitude of the supervisor who fired the employee was irrelevant to whether he should be rehired. The employee, Dennis wrote, “was fired for refusing to disclose information about protected union activities during an interrogation.”
The ruling sent the case back to the NLRB for further action. It was not immediately clear whether an appeal would be made to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The union did not respond to a question from The Associated Press about its next step. But on Tuesday evening, President Shawn Fain cited the case in an online speech to rally union members to vote and participate in the election process.
Musk, he said, has poured millions into Republican Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
“It’s no coincidence that Elon Musk is one of the most anti-union auto CEOs in history, and that he buys elections to rig the law in his favor,” Fain said. “That’s what happens when the billionaire class makes the rules. And that’s what happens when working class people are left on the sidelines.”
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AP Auto Writer Tom Krisher contributed from Detroit.