Elon Musk’s X may finally settle $500M severance lawsuit

More than two years after leaving the company, some former Twitter employees may finally receive their severance pay. Elon Musk’s X is tentatively settling a class action lawsuit filed by workers who were let go soon after he purchased Twitter.

This news comes in the form of a court filing where both parties asked the court to delay an upcoming hearing so that they could work out a deal.

After buying Twitter in 2022, Musk laid off over 6,000 Twitter employees, reducing the company’s headcount by around 80%. While Musk offered three months’ severance, the lawsuit claims that many former employees didn’t receive complete payments, while some didn’t receive any payment at all.

The lawsuit also alleges that Musk’s offer of three months’ severance was lower than what employees expected from a Twitter severance plan that had been in place since 2019, which would have guaranteed senior employees severance of up to six months’ base pay, plus one week of pay per year of service.

But in July, a U.S. District Judge in San Francisco ruled that Musk did not have to honor the severance agreements that these employees had entered with Twitter. The plaintiffs appealed the ruling, however, and the parties were set to enter oral arguments in a court of appeals next month before requesting that the hearing be delayed.