Latest news with #AgeDiscriminationinEmploymentAct
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Judge allows Workday AI bias lawsuit to proceed as collective action
This story was originally published on HR Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily HR Dive newsletter. Workday Inc. will have to face a collective-action lawsuit alleging that the company's artificial intelligence-based applicant recommendation system discriminated against workers age 40 and older (Mobley v. Workday, Inc.), a federal judge ruled Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Judge Rita Lin granted the applicant's request for preliminary certification of a collective action on the age discrimination claim because applicants 'are alike in the central way that matters: they were allegedly required to compete on unequal footing due to Workday's discriminatory AI recommendations,' according to the order. The applicant and four opt-in plaintiffs said they received hundreds of quick rejections without interviews for jobs via Workday, in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. Workday has said it could be difficult to identify members of the collective because of the potential number of applicants affected, but the judge said 'those challenges do not appear insurmountable.' 'If the collective is in the 'hundreds of millions' of people, as Workday speculates, that is because Workday has been plausibly accused of discriminating against a broad swath of applicants. Allegedly widespread discrimination is not a basis for denying notice,' Lin ruled. The class will include individuals aged 40 and over who were denied employment recommendations for job opportunities through Workday's job application platform from Sept. 24, 2020, through 'the present,' the court said. A Workday spokesperson said the company continues to believe the case is without merit. 'This is a preliminary ruling at an early stage of this case, and before the facts have been established. We're confident that once those facts are presented to the court, the plaintiff's claims will be dismissed,' the spokesperson said in an emailed statement to HR Dive. To prove disparate impact under the ADEA, plaintiffs need to show a significant disparate impact on a protected class or group; identify the employment practices at issue; and demonstrate a causal relationship between those practices and the disparate impact, the court said. Workday argued that the applicant should be held to a significantly higher burden of proof at the first stage of the 'similarly situated' analysis because discovery has already started. 'In essence, Workday proposes a sliding scale, in which the more discovery has occurred, the more evidence plaintiff should have to provide,' per the order. The judge declined to apply a sliding scale standard, 'which is contrary to the procedure used by virtually all district courts in this circuit.' That type of approach 'would be impossible to apply with consistency, would encourage gamesmanship' and is contrary to precedent, the judge said. Workday also presented several arguments for why the plaintiff's lawsuit should not be granted class-action status. The company said it doesn't offer employment recommendations, so even the plaintiff shouldn't be part of the collective; it said the policy in question is not uniformly applied to all applicants; and Workday said the variation in the proposed class members' qualifications for the jobs, the number of jobs applied to and the rejection rate mean the applicants could not be similarly situated. The court said that Workday's own website and the company's responses during discovery run contrary to its claim that it doesn't recommend applicants. The court noted that the proposed class only includes individuals whose applications were subject to Workday's AI; and the court said the plaintiff 'is not required to prove that each member of the proposed collective is identically situated … his burden is to identify legal or factual similarities that are material to the resolution of the case.' Judge Lin ordered Workday and the plaintiffs to work together to identify the best way to notify potential class members. Correction: In a previous version of this article, the date range of the applicants who could be included in the class was misstated. The class will include individuals aged 40 and over who were denied employment recommendations for job opportunities through Workday's job application platform from Sept. 24, 2020, through 'the present." Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Jury returns win for Levi Strauss in sex discrimination case
This story was originally published on HR Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily HR Dive newsletter. Dive Brief: A California jury on Monday cleared retailer Levi Strauss of sex discrimination charges filed by a former executive (Bois v. Levi Strauss & Co.), finding she did not prove her sex and pregnancy were substantial motivating factors for her lack of promotion. The executive, who was hired as a manager in 2012 and promoted to director level by 2017, alleged in a June 2023 complaint that she was passed over for further promotions due to her pregnancy, gender, and age, while eight other colleagues with less or equal experience in the role were promoted around her. She also alleged violations of the Equal Pay Act. Last July, a judge tossed the worker's age discrimination and equal pay claims, finding she provided no evidence for the former and the latter law did not apply, but allowed the other claims to proceed to a trial. Dive Insight: The former executive, who resigned from her role in 2023, filed her lawsuit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the California Fair Employment and Housing Act and the California Equal Pay Act. It proceeded to trial on several Title VII and FEHA claims, with the other charges being thrown out. The jury reached its verdict after a brief deliberation, according to court documents. In her complaint, the former executive alleged her manager passed her over for a promotion shortly after she disclosed her pregnancy, saying the decision was due to her 'work capacity,' which she took to be a thinly veiled reference to her pregnancy and the subsequent leave and obligations of raising an infant. In a response to the complaint filed with the court in July 2023, Levi Strauss denied these allegations, along with the others; however, the judge found genuine dispute of material fact warranting a trial. The outcome is somewhat unusual for an employment law case. Employers often choose to settle in advance of a trial, due to the trial's potential cost and the perception that jurors tend to side with employee plaintiffs — among other reasons. HR Dive coverage of recent jury verdicts includes a $300,000 award for a SkyWest Airlines parts clerk who endured sexual harassment (brought down from $2.7 million), a $22.1 million award to a Wells Fargo director who was laid off after a work-from-home accommodation request, and a $12.7 million award to a Catholic worker who was refused a religious exemption for a COVID-19 vaccination and then fired. Neither Levi Strauss & Co. nor an attorney for the plaintiff immediately responded to requests for comment.
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Movie theater chain settles lawsuit alleging it halted workers' health insurance at age 65
This story was originally published on HR Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily HR Dive newsletter. A movie theater chain will pay $250,000 to settle an age discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that alleged the company forced a longtime manager to retire because he was 73, the agency said April 10 (EEOC v. Allen Theatres). The company allegedly did not allow the manager of 31 years to return to work when the theaters reopened in March 2021 after COVID-19-related closures. Allen Theatres, Inc., which operates theaters in New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado, also allegedly refused to pay workers' health insurance when they turned 65 and became eligible for Medicare, EEOC said. The discriminatory pay policy also led to the company paying lower compensation to workers 65 and older, per EEOC. The company allegedly violated the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), which prohibits age-related discrimination in the hiring, firing, and compensation of employees 40 years old or older. Under the two-year consent decree, Allen Theatres will be required to offer health insurance to any employee who is 65 or older and not currently enrolled, to revise its policies to prohibit age discrimination and to offer 'robust' investigative and training procedures related to age discrimination, EEOC said. 'Employers must train their staff to recognize discriminatory treatment of employees and protect employees by providing equal employee benefits regardless of their age,' Melinda Caraballo, district director of EEOC's Phoenix district office, said in a statement. The settlement requires the company to provide one hour annually of Equal Employment Opportunity training to all nonmanagerial employees; three hours annually of training on the ADEA and other anti-discrimination laws enforced by the EEOC to all managerial and supervisory employees; and five hours annually of training on the ADEA and other federal anti-discrimination laws to all HR staff. 'It violates federal anti-discrimination law for managers or any corporate officers to force workers over the age of 40 to involuntarily retire because of their age,' Mary Jo O'Neill, regional attorney for EEOC's Phoenix district office, said in a statement. 'Employers should not impose their ideas about when older employees should quit working, especially for those employees who want to work, are qualified to work, and are doing a good job.' EEOC filed the complaint against Allen Theatres Sept. 27, 2024, in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico. At the time, EEOC said the theater company's president testified that his decision to force the worker into retirement was legally allowed because he was 'normal retirement age.' Allen Theatres could not immediately be reached for comment. Sign in to access your portfolio
