(Reuters) – A federal appeals court on Friday said it will reconsider its recent decision that Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk violated federal labor law by tweeting that employees would lose stock options if they joined a union.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans said it will review the case en banc, meaning that all active judges will take part.
A three-judge panel of the same court had in March upheld a National Labor Relations Board decision that Musk’s tweet was an unlawful threat that could discourage unionization, and ordering Musk to delete it.
Musk issued the tweet on May 20, 2018, as the United Auto Workers was seeking to organize employees at Tesla’s plant in Fremont, California.
“Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. Could do so tmrw if they wanted,” he wrote. “But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing?”
A decision is unlikely before 2024.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
