A Falcon 9 rocket is displayed outside the Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) headquarters on January 28, 2021 in Hawthorne, California. The U.S. Department of Justice sued SpaceX on Thursday, alleging Elon Musk's space company discriminated against refugees and asylum seekers in its hiring practices. The lawsuit says between 2018 and 2022, SpaceX "wrongly claimed" that export control laws limited its hiring to U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents. The DOJ has been investigating SpaceX since June 2020, when the department's Immigrant and Employee Rights Section received a complaint of employment discrimination from a non-U.S. citizen. Fabian Hutter, whose complaint about SpaceX led the DOJ to open its discrimination probe, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.

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Persons: SpaceX, Elon, Kristen Clarke, Clarke, asylees, IER, Fabian Hutter, Hutter Organizations: Space Exploration Technologies Corp, SpaceX, The U.S . Department of Justice, DOJ, Civil Rights Division, CNBC Locations: Hawthorne , California, The, U.S, Austria, Canada