Elon Musk has achieved a victory in one of the lawsuits filed against him for firing over 6,000 Twitter employees following his takeover of the social media platform in 2022. A federal judge ruled that X Corp., Musk's company, does not owe any additional severance pay to the ex-employees.

The lawsuit, initiated by Twitter's former head of people experience and another ex-manager, alleged that X Corp. paid fired Twitter employees less severance than what was contractually promised to them. The complaint stated that Twitter had previously offered senior employees up to six months of severance pay, compared to the three months offered to the fired employees. Musk confirmed this in a tweet at the time of the mass firings.

The plaintiffs estimated that Musk owed the former employees more than $500 million under the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). However, Judge Thompson ruled that the ERISA protections did not apply because X Corp. had notified the employees shortly after the takeover that they would only receive cash payouts. As a result, the mass firings were not covered by Twitter's previous severance plan.

Since the mass firings in November 2022, X Corp. has been operating the social media platform with a significantly reduced staff. Musk revealed in an interview with the BBC in 2023 that he had downsized Twitter's workforce to 1,500 employees, a significant decrease from the approximately 8,000 employees before the takeover. This move was part of the company's cost-cutting efforts.

Despite these efforts, X Corp. has faced ongoing struggles. Documents obtained by Bloomberg revealed that the company incurred a loss of $456 million in the first quarter of 2023.

However, Musk is not yet in the clear regarding the mass firings. In a separate lawsuit, Parag Agrawal, the former CEO of Twitter, along with three other former executives, is seeking $128 million in severance payments from X Corp. after being let go in the mass firing. Additionally, another lawsuit filed by former senior employees of Twitter is seeking over $1 million in severance payments. Musk, however, has stated that he did not agree to these former employees' benefit plans.

This ruling has provided some relief for Musk, but the legal battles surrounding the mass firings of Twitter employees are far from over.