Court decision · 12 July 2024
Mobley v. Workday, Inc.
No. 3:23-cv-00770 (N.D. Cal. July 12, 2024) · U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California
Limited by later decisions. Motion-to-dismiss ruling; the litigation is ongoing.
What it means for your code
B2B vendors of scoring or screening models can be directly liable for discriminatory outcomes; test for disparate impact and keep human review.
What happened
An applicant rejected from over 100 jobs alleged that Workday's AI screening tools discriminated on race, age and disability.
What was decided
An AI vendor to which employers delegate hiring functions can plausibly be liable as the employers' 'agent' under federal anti-discrimination law. A nationwide age-discrimination collective was later conditionally certified (May 2025).
The legal test applied
- A vendor to which employers delegate hiring functions can plausibly be liable as their 'agent' under federal anti-discrimination law
What would have changed the outcome
- Tools that only assist human decision-makers, with validated and bias-tested models
Summary and analysis by Lawpatch, checked by an editor against the source. Risk analysis, not legal advice; the law may have moved on since this decision.