Deaf Tesla Employee Fired After Complaining Factory’s Heat Disabled Hearing Aids, Lawsuit Claims

Tesla shareholders just decided to make the company’s CEO, Elon Musk, a trillionaire—with board members arguing that the shit-posting edgelord is, despite being a PR trainwreck, somehow indispensable to the firm. It would appear, however, that if you’re just a rank-and-file Tesla employee—one whose primary focus is doing your job (this, as opposed to, say, propping up rightwing demagogues, waving a chainsaw around, or sending random people your sperm)—the EV company considers you significantly more expendable.

Case in point: a former employee at Tesla recently sued the company, claiming that it terminated his position in violation of federal law. That former employee, Hans Khols, is deaf. According to a lawsuit published by The Independent, Khols was hired via the company’s rigorous START internship, designed to transition successful applicants to full-time employees as equipment technicians. The lawsuit claims his Tesla interviewer knew Khols was deaf when he was hired. However, the suit claims that the Gigafactory’s Casting Department, where he was assigned, was so hot that it made his hearing aids malfunction. Not long after he asked to be transferred to a department where the environment wasn’t so hot (he maintains that there were other suitable departments where he could have easily served in his role), his position was terminated, the lawsuit claims.

The Casting Department, where Khols was assigned, “utilizes high-pressure die-casting machines to melt aluminum ingots, creating an environment of extreme heat and humidity,†the suit explains. The heat from this industrial process caused his hearing aids to go haywire, the former employee maintains: 

Upon starting in the Casting Department, the extreme heat and moisture caused Mr. Kohls’ electronic hearing aids to malfunction. The malfunction of his hearing aids prevented Mr. Kohls from reliably hearing safety signals in that specific environment. This was an environmental barrier related to equipment failure caused by extreme conditions unique to the Casting Department, not an inherent functional limitation on his ability to perform the job duties.

The complaint also states that although Khols had communicated during the interview process that he could work in a hot environment, he was unaware of just how hot the Gigafactory would be:

Neither the application nor the interview disclosed that the Casting Department’s extreme heat and humidity conditions would far exceed standard industrial heat levels. The Casting Department utilizes high-pressure die-casting operations that melt aluminum at approximately 1,220°F. Mr. Kohls could not have reasonably anticipated these specific conditions would cause his hearing aids to malfunction until he experienced them firsthand.

The suit also notes that there were other departments which it would have been easy to transfer him to in another department:

The ability to withstand the extreme heat specific to the Casting Department’s die-casting operations is not an essential function of the Equipment Technician position generally, as evidenced by Equipment Technicians working successfully in numerous other departments at GFTX with standard industrial temperatures.

The complaint further states that Tesla failed in its “legal obligation†to transfer him to a suitable department:

Instead of fulfilling its legal obligation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADAâ€) to reassign Mr. Kohls to a vacant position, Tesla terminated his employment just nine days after his accommodation request, explicitly telling him he was being “medically separated.â€

When reached for comment by Gizmodo, Khols’ attorney, Andrew Rozynski, told us:

The facts of this case are stark and troubling. Tesla had a highly qualified employee who requested the most basic accommodation under the ADA, reassignment to a vacant position where he’d already demonstrated success. Instead of complying with the law, they fired him within nine days and told him he was being ‘medically separated.’

Hans Kohls outperformed his peers in Tesla’s own training program, successfully worked in multiple departments at the Gigafactory, and asked for nothing more than reassignment to a role where extreme heat wouldn’t damage his hearing aids. Tesla’s response? Termination. The ADA exists precisely to prevent this kind of discrimination.

Gizmodo reached out to Tesla for comment, and we’ll update this post when we receive a reply.

Earlier this year, Musk led the Trump administration’s DOGE effort, which sought to downsize the overall size of the government. Musk claimed he wanted to shave trillions of dollars from the federal budget, but recent reports show DOGE wasted billions of dollars and may have had no impact on the deficit. Musk left the government in May, not long after a high-level administration official reportedly said he was the “most irritating†person they’d ever had to deal with and suggested he be required to take regular drug tests.