Feb 24 : A U.S. judge has refused to dismiss a lawsuit accusing Tesla of discriminating against American citizens in hiring so it can pay less to foreign workers, but said he was skeptical that the software engineer who sued would prevail. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco said in a brief order late Monday that Scott Taub, who filed the proposed class action in September, had offered up “just enough facts” about Tesla’s hiring practices for the case to move forward.  Taub says the electric carmaker led by billionaire Elon Musk passed him over for an engineering job, part of its “systematic preference” to hire foreign visa holders in violation of federal civil rights law. He also says layoffs at Tesla have disproportionately targeted U.S. citizens.  Chhabria on Monday said Tesla must face Taub’s claims that a recruiter for a staffing company told him that the engineering job he sought was “H1B only,” referring to H-1B visas granted to highly educated foreign workers and heavily relied upon by the tech industry.  The …