In April 2024, a former SpaceX employee filed an administrative complaint with California’s Civil Rights Department (CRD), alleging the company violated the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) by paying her less than a male colleague hired around the same time, passing her over for a promotion in favor of a less experienced man, and firing her in retaliation for helping draft and circulate an open letter accusing the company and its CEO of fostering a hostile work environment and engaging in sexual harassment and gender discrimination. The employee listed a California address for SpaceX.

CRD served SpaceX with interrogatories and a subpoena seeking records related to the employee and her allegations. SpaceX objected on the ground that CRD lacked jurisdiction because the employee resided in Washington state and worked out of SpaceX’s Redmond, Washington office, and FEHA does not apply outside California. CRD narrowed its request to fourteen items aimed at the jurisdictional question. Based on SpaceX’s supplemental responses, CRD concluded it had jurisdiction over the retaliation claim but needed more information to assess jurisdiction over the discrimination claims. SpaceX declined to provide it, prompting CRD to go to court. In its filings, CRD pointed to a related lawsuit in which the employee alleged she reported to a SpaceX vice president based in California, her direct manager since 2021 was located in California, her pay statements were issued from and listed a California facility, and her new-hire paperwork referenced California employment law.

In April 2025, CRD petitioned the Los Angeles County Superior Court to compel SpaceX’s compliance with the subpoena, both on the merits of the retaliation claim and on the jurisdictional question underlying the discrimination claims. SpaceX opposed, submitting a declaration from a Redmond-based HR director asserting that Washington-based managers made the relevant compensation, promotion, and termination decisions, and that the employee was hired, worked, and lived in Washington throughout. On May 23, 2025, Judge Maureen Duffy-Lewis granted CRD’s petition without stating her reasons, and set a further hearing on the scope of the requests. SpaceX appealed.

In the partially published opinion of Civil Rights Department v. Space Exploration Technologies Corp., No. B346853 (Cal. Ct. App., 2d Dist., Div. 3, filed Aug. 11, 2026; certified for partial pub. Sept. 9, 2026). The Court of Appeal affirmed the order compelling SpaceX to comply with CRD’s subpoena, and awarded CRD its costs on appeal.The Second Appellate District expressly excluded Part 2 of its Discussion section (the portion addressing SpaceX’s federal constitutional arguments) from publication

The panel first addressed — in the unpublished portion of the opinion — SpaceX’s argument that enforcing the subpoena violates the federal constitution. It found SpaceX’s briefing on the commerce clause, due process, full faith and credit, and supremacy clause theories too cursory to preserve any of them, noting that “the most fundamental rule of appellate review is that the judgment or order challenged on appeal is presumed to be correct,” placing the burden on the appellant to show error with reasoned legal argument (citing Argueta v. Worldwide Flight Services, Inc. (2023) 97 Cal.App.5th 822, and City of Santa Maria v. Adam (2012) 211 Cal.App.4th 266). A “fishing expedition”/unreasonable-search theory raised for the first time in SpaceX’s reply brief was forfeited on the same basis.

Turning to the published portion, the court addressed whether enforcing the subpoena violates the presumption against extraterritorial application of California law. Applying the California Supreme Court’s framework in Ward v. United Airlines, Inc. (2020) 9 Cal.5th 732, the panel explained that because SpaceX did not argue any extraterritorial effect categorically bars applying FEHA, the real question is what California connections are sufficient to trigger the statute — a question that must be answered separately for CRD’s investigatory authority (Gov. Code §§ 12930, 12963.1, 12963.5) than for FEHA’s substantive prohibitions, since a subpoena carries less risk of conflict with another state’s law than an injunction would.

The court rejected SpaceX’s proposed categorical rule, drawn from Kearney v. Salomon Smith Barney, Inc. (2006) 39 Cal.4th 95, that FEHA applies only if the adverse employment action itself occurred in California. It found SpaceX never explained where an “adverse employment action” occurs when employer and employee touch multiple states, and that the complaint’s actual California connections — including allegations the employee’s manager and reporting chain were based in California and her pay statements issued from California — undercut SpaceX’s characterization that everything happened in Washington. The court likewise rejected a broader rule, urged at oral argument, that California labor and employment statutes never protect a worker who did not work in California, distinguishing Tidewater Marine Western, Inc. v. Bradshaw (1996) 14 Cal.4th 557, Sullivan v. Oracle Corp. (2011) 51 Cal.4th 1191, and Oman v. Delta Air Lines, Inc. (2020) 9 Cal.5th 762, as wage-and-hour decisions that left open the possibility of extraterritorial application and that, per Ward, must be read statute-by-statute rather than as announcing a blanket rule for all California employment law.

Finally, the court distinguished Campbell v. Arco Marine, Inc. (1996) 42 Cal.App.4th 1850, where FEHA was held inapplicable to a Washington-based employee’s shipboard harassment claims, because there the relevant California connections were undisputed and absent, whereas here the very purpose of the subpoena was to determine whether sufficient California connections exist. The court added that SpaceX’s reliance on earlier cases involving conduct that was not actionable under FEHA at all was misplaced, since it is undisputed the conduct the employee alleges — sex/gender discrimination and retaliation — is unlawful under FEHA; the only open question is whether the California nexus is sufficient, which is precisely what CRD’s subpoena seeks to investigate.