A trial over car manufacturer Tesla’s alleged racially discriminatory employment practices begins Monday in Alameda County, California, according to Reuters.
The trial is scheduled to run until October 30 before state Superior Court Judge Peter Borkon and is one of multiple similar suits against Tesla. The case will proceed as a bench trial, meaning the judge, not a jury, will determine factual questions.
The 2022 complaint brought by the California Civil Rights Department (CRD) alleged rampant racial discrimination at the company’s Fremont factory outside of San Francisco. Plaintiffs claimed Black workers were continually subjected to racial slurs, work-floor segregation, intimidation, and retaliation at the hands of co-workers, supervisors, and managers. Management staff purportedly delegated Black workers more dangerous and labor-intensive work than non-Black co-workers, regularly denied promotion opportunities, and ignored, demoted, or fired Black workers for filing complaints about disparate treatment.
As attorneys for the CRD explained:
[A] job at Tesla is often seen as a golden ticket. It is seen as a way for those without a technical background or a college degree to secure a job in tech, and a path to a career and a living wage. Yet Tesla’s brand … masks the reality of a company that profits from an army of production workers, many of whom are people of color, working under egregious conditions.
The suit also cited alleged emails from Tesla CEO Elon Musk in which, upon being notified of purported racial harassment, Musk suggested that “if someone is being a jerk to you, but sincerely apologizes, it is important to be thick-skinned and accept the apology.”
The case comes to trial after lengthy discovery and procedural debates. Tesla filed a cross-claim in late 2022, alleging CRD had adopted “underground regulations” in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. In early 2023, the court held that “Tesla’s [cross-claim] in large part appears to have no merit.” The court also stated it was “frustrated” because parties filed briefs on the alleged “underground regulations without [mentioning] CRD has express regulations that cover the same topics.” While critical, the court ultimately allowed Tesla to amend its cross-claim.
In April 2026, the court rejected Tesla’s renewed motion for summary judgment following plaintiff objections, setting the case up for trial.
CRD was created through California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act and is tasked with “initiating and investigating complaints on behalf of itself and persons alleged to be aggrieved by discriminatory employment practices,” acting like a “public prosecutor” for civil employment actions. The statute creates greater worker protections than federal statutory counterparts and does not place a hard cap on recoverable damages, allowing CRD latitude to “vindicate what it considers to be in the public interest.”
Tesla is the eleventh largest company in the world, with a market cap of roughly $1.4 trillion dollars as of September 2026. The company has grown in estimated value by at least $100 billion since 2022.
