Elon Musk watches as President Donald Trump speaks at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, Nov. 19, 2025.
Brendan Smialowski AFP | Getty Images
Delaware Judge Katherine McCormick said Monday she would reassign a case involving Elon Musk. tesla The CEO accused her of bias because she appeared to endorse social media posts criticizing him.
Musk formally accused McCormick of bias last week, and his lawyers asked a Delaware Court of Chancery judge to recuse him from the two Tesla lawsuits. The LinkedIn post, to which McCormick reportedly replied with an emoji, promoted a court ruling that could cost Musk more than $2 billion for defrauding Twitter investors.
In a letter to Musk’s lawyers last week, McCormick said Musk had no intention of clicking on the emoji to express his support for the post, and that he had notified LinkedIn of possible “suspicious activity” on his account.
In Monday’s order, McCormick denied the motion to rescind, but said he would reassign three mask-related cases currently in Chancery Court to other judges.
“The motion to retract is based on the false premise that I support my LinkedIn posts about Mr. Musk, when in fact I do not,” she wrote. “I have no bias against the defendants in these cases. In fact, just last year I dismissed the case against Mr. Musk. The motion to rescind was denied, but the motion to reassign was granted.”
Mr. McCormick became a target of Mr. Musk’s ire when he presided over the Tornetta v. Mr. Musk shareholder lawsuit, ordering Tesla to cancel its 2018 CEO pay package worth about $56 billion in options.
Mr. Musk moved his businesses, including Tesla, out of Delaware and incorporated into Texas and Nevada, and encouraged other companies to do the same.
In 2025, the Delaware Supreme Court said Musk’s 2018 pay package should be restored, ruling that the lower court’s decision in McCormick was an extreme remedy and did not give Tesla a say in what fair compensation for Musk should be.
“Undue media attention surrounding judges’ handling of cases is detrimental to the administration of justice,” McCormick wrote in Monday’s order. She said she had “complete faith” in her colleague’s ability to adjudicate the case.
Tesla and Musk still have two lawsuits in Delaware court. One concerns Tesla’s director compensation, and the other is a consolidated shareholder lawsuit filed by investors alleging that Musk breached his fiduciary duty to Tesla when he launched xAI, a potential artificial intelligence competitor.
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