The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has started investigating the employment practices of Elon Musk’s SpaceX after receiving a complaint by a non-US citizen for discrimination.

The non-citizen claims that he was not hired by SpaceX due to his citizenship status, as he was repeatedly asked questions about his nationality during the interview conducted by SpaceX. He filed a complaint with the Immigrant and Employee Rights (IER) section of the DOJ under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The complaint filed before the court by the DOJ states:

The INA’s anti-discrimination provision prohibits citizenship status and nationality origin discrimination in hiring, firing or recruitment or referral for a fee. The provision also prohibits “unfair documentary practices,” which occur when an employer, as part of the employment eligibility verification (EEV) process, requests more or different documents than are required to prove eligibility to work in the United States, or rejects an employee’s documents that reasonably appear genuine, because of the employee’s citizenship status or national origin.

As part of the investigation, the IER asked SpaceX to produce certain documents. However, SpaceX has failed to produce documents such as copies of employees’ passports, driver’s licenses and social security cards.

The DOJ has requested the court to pass an order requiring SpaceX to produce the necessary documents.