PHILADELPHIA — A federal lawsuit filed Tuesday in Pennsylvania accuses billionaire Elon Musk and the political action committee he started of failing to pay a suburban Philadelphia man more than $20,000 for getting people to sign a petition in favor of free speech and gun rights.
The lawsuit seeking class-action status claims the man, referred to as Bucks County resident John Doe and requesting to remain anonymous, received hourly pay for canvassing ahead of the November presidential election, but that he was not fully paid for the petition referrals.
It claims “John Doe” has repeatedly tried to obtain payment but has not been successful. He says he has been in touch with others who have the same complaint.
“There’s been a lot of discussion and concern from people who were not paid what they understood they were going to be paid,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, a lawyer for “John Doe,” said in a phone interview late Tuesday. The lawsuit was first reported by The New York Times.
Musk’s America PAC offered to pay $100 for registered voters to sign the petition and $100 for people who referred a registered voter who signed the petition.
“America PAC is committed to paying for every legitimate petition signature, which is evidenced by the fact that we have paid tens of millions of dollars to canvassers for their hard work in support of our mission,” America PAC spokesperson Andrew Romeo said in an email. “While we don’t yet know who this ‘John Doe’ plaintiff is and can’t speak to their specific circumstances, we can say that we are also committed to rooting out fraud and have the right to withhold payments to fraudsters.”
The America PAC website says it has mailed out “the overwhelming majority” of the checks it owes to petition signers but that some “have been flagged for mismatched information” that requires attention.
“The answer is basically, ‘we’re working on it,’ but I think that’s been up there for a while,” Liss-Riordan said.
The lawsuit accuses Musk, the PAC and Group America LLC of breaching a contract and violating Pennsylvania state wage payment law.
Musk gave $1 million checks Sunday to two Wisconsin voters, calling them spokespeople for the political group, as voters there were electing a Supreme Court justice on Tuesday.
In Pennsylvania last year, Democratic District Attorney Larry Krasner of Philadelphia sued to challenge a $1 million voter sweepstakes Musk ran. But a judge allowed it to continue, ruling Krasner had not shown it amounted to an illegal lottery.
