X Stuck Paying Fees to Arbitrate With Laid Off Twitter Workers

X Corp. lost its bid to force former employees to pay more of the fees necessary to arbitrate claims over layoffs following Elon Musk’s takeover.

The private arbitration organization handling those proceedings already directed X to pay the bulk of the initial fees and it isn’t appropriate to intervene in that decision, the US District Court for the Central District of California said. Judge R. Gary Klausner also rejected the workers’ bid to sanction the company for dragging them back to court when they’d already paid their share of the fees.

Former Twitter workers allege the widespread layoffs after Musk purchased the company in 2022 targeted them based on race, sex, age, or disability. Other suits say X stiffed them on severance payments or skipped legally required advance notice of their firings. The company faces dozens of court cases and more than 2,000 individual arbitration proceedings stemming from the layoffs.

X could be looking at millions of dollars in arbitration fees for those proceedings, an attorney representing the company told a US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit panel reviewing one arbitration fee dispute earlier this year.

JAMS—formerly known as Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services—said the X arbitrations triggered its rules on procedural fairness in employment disputes. Under those rules, workers are responsible for $400 of the initial $2,000 fee for each individual arbitration proceeding, with X on the hook for the rest. X balked at footing the majority of the initial bill and argued that only an arbitrator, not JAMS itself, can decide fee apportionment. But the parties can’t get in front of an arbitrator until someone pays the initial fees.

X filed a handful of cases seeking to force workers to resume arbitration, arguing that a judge should resolve the fee dispute in the arbitrator’s absence. But fee payment is a “procedural issue best suited for the arbitrator to decide, not a district court,” Klausner said. The court can’t conclude that the seven worker defendants in this suit refused to arbitrate when they declined to pay a higher share of the fees, he added.

Just because the court shut down X’s arguments doesn’t mean they’re frivolous or unreasonable, Klausner said. They don’t appear to have been “outright foreclosed by a controlling authority,” so sanctions aren’t appropriate, according to the order.

Lichten & Liss-Riordan PC represents the workers. Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP and Clement & Murphy PLLC represent X.

The case is X Corp. v. Bahr, C.D. Cal., No. 2:25-cv-02766, motions denied 7/31/25.