(Reuters) -A California state judge has ruled that more than 6,000 Black workers at Tesla's flagship assembly plant cannot sue over alleged racial harassment as a class, reversing an earlier ruling in a major victory for CEO Elon Musk's electric vehicle maker.
California Superior Court Judge Peter Borkon ruled on Friday that the 2017 lawsuit could not move forward as a class action because many of the 200 workers chosen at random to testify ahead of a trial scheduled for 2026 were unwilling to do so.
Borkon said he could not trust that the experiences of a smaller sample of workers could be applied to the entire class.
A different judge had certified the class in 2024, but Borkon said that was based on the belief that a trial in the large-scale case would be manageable.
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment on Monday. The company has said that it does not tolerate workplace harassment and that it has fired employees who engaged in racial misconduct.
Lawrence Organ, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said that many of the people who were randomly chosen to testify are low-income workers who cannot afford to miss work to participate in the case.
“Either together with other victims, or separately, these courageous Black workers will overcome Tesla’s endless delays and continue fighting to hold the company accountable,” Organ said in a statement.
The named plaintiff, former assembly-line worker Marcus Vaughn, alleged that Black workers at the Fremont, California, factory were subjected to a range of racist conduct including slurs, graffiti and nooses hung at their workstations.
A trial had been scheduled for next April, two months before a separate trial involving similar claims against Tesla by a California state civil rights agency.
Tesla is also facing race discrimination claims in federal court in California brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces federal anti-discrimination laws. The company has settled other race discrimination lawsuits involving single plaintiffs.
The case is Vaughn v. Tesla, California Superior Court, Alameda County, No. RG17882082.
(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by Will Dunham and Lisa Shumaker)
