Having previously been thwarted in a request to obtain medical records of a SpaceX employee who alleges in a lawsuit that she became pregnant after being coerced into a sexual relationship with a supervisor, the company is back in court with a new and similar motion that her lawyers call a “waste of judicial resources.”
Plaintiff Michelle Dopak alleges in her Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit that she suffered discrimination and harassment in the workplace, that Hawthorne-based SpaceX paid her less than male colleagues and that the company retaliated against her for reporting sexual harassment by a manager. Dopak’s attorneys state in new court papers filed Wednesday that the SpaceX motion should be denied and the company fined $16,000.
“SpaceX’s motion is a waste of judicial resources and should have been withdrawn immediately after this court quashed the subpoenas that this motion is predicated on,” Dopak’s attorneys state in their court papers filed July 16. “However, rather than withdraw this motion, SpaceX presses forward with this motion to compel plaintiff to sign an overly broad medical-record authorization pursuant to subpoenas that were already quashed.”
SpaceX attorneys had acknowledged that Judge Tony L. Richardson had directed SpaceX to serve subpoenas that are limited to Dopak’s emotional distress and disability claims, according to the plaintiff’s lawyers court papers, which further state that SpaceX’s demand for $12,000 in sanctions should be denied and that the company should instead pay $16,000 to Dopak.
But according to the SpaceX attorneys’ court papers, it is Dopak and not the defense who “continues to waste the court’s and the parties’ resources by stonewalling and forcing motion practice at every turn.”
The SpaceX lawyers further state that their subpoenas are indeed “narrowly tailored” to Dopak’s emotional distress symptoms and claimed disabilities. A hearing on the SpaceX motion is scheduled Wednesday.
In her lawsuit filed in March 2024, Dopak, now 39, says she was hired in August 2017 as a production coordinator and was paid $5,000 less than a male colleague with the same job who was hired at the same time she was. She maintains she was repeatedly subjected to retaliation after complaining of discrimination that included being wrongfully denied promotion to a scheduler position.
Dopak, who now lives in Florida, also alleges a male supervisor convinced her to have sex with him and eventually promoted her to a scheduler position in exchange for continued sexual relations. Dopak believed her career advancement would be impaired if she did not comply with her boss’ alleged demands, the suit states.
The supervisor later offered to pay Dopak $100,000 to have an abortion after she became pregnant with his child, but she refused, the suit states.
Despite upper management’s knowledge of the pregnancy, no disciplinary actions were taken against the married supervisor, according to the lawsuit.
“It was immediately apparent that SpaceX had (the supervisor’s) proverbial back and that (Dopak) needed to remain silent or risk losing her job,” Dopak’s attorneys wrote in court documents.
In its two core businesses, SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches rockets and spacecraft and uses them to provide launch services to various customers located in various states and countries. The firm also provides high speed, low latency satellite internet to customers around the world using its constellation of thousands of satellites in low earth orbit and ground infrastructure.
Trial of Dopak’s case is schedule for April 20, 2027.