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A high-profile lawsuit involving Pleasanton’s top employer is continuing to unfold in court following a judge’s order last month requiring the company to provide a list of clients that use its optional AI features in screening and selecting job applicants.
U.S. Northern District Judge Rita Lin ruled July 29 that Pleasanton-based Workday is required to provide a list of its customers that use its optional HiredScore AI feature.
The judge’s order comes despite arguments from Workday’s attorneys that the HiredScore feature was deployed after the lawsuit was initially filed in 2023 by Derek Mobley, alleging that he had been subject to algorithmic bias from employers using Workday’s AI tools for their job application and hiring processes.
Officials for Workday have maintained throughout the ongoing lawsuit that the case is without merit, emphasized the company’s commitment to ethical AI practices, and said they are confident Workday will prevail in court.
Earlier this year, the case was granted a preliminary collective action certification, allowing it to move forward for the time being in a similar way to a class action case, and allowing other plaintiffs to join in Mobley’s claims for damages.
According to the preliminary certification, the collective class joining Mobley consists of those who applied to multiple companies using Workday’s platform and allege that they were subject to age discrimination in the ranking and sorting processes for candidates from Sept. 24, 2020 to the present.
While Workday contends that its screening and hiring platform does not automatically rank or reject candidates using AI, the platform features some optional AI features. Prior to the introduction of HiredScore, it offered an optional Candidate Skills Match tool that utilizes AI.
Because the collective class at the current stage includes plaintiffs through the present day, the judge ordered that Workday also provide information on the clients who had used HiredScore.
“At this stage, the fact that Workday has expanded or made changes to its AI features over time does not mean that newer AI features are outside of the scope of the unified policy substantially alleged,” Lin wrote.
However, she acknowledged that challenges to the proposed collective as it stands could be appropriate down the line.
“Workday takes the position that there are material differences in the scoring algorithms between the HiredScore AI features and Candidate Skills Match (“CSM”) that would create a need for subclasses or render Mobley an inadequate representative,” Lin wrote. “That issue is best addressed at the decertification stage.”
Some customers who enabled the optional AI features might be excluded from the forthcoming list, Lin said, if the company can “determine definitively” that those customers did not receive scores or rankings of candidates based on those features.
The two sides were ordered to meet and confer in the July 29 order, and to provide a case management statement Aug. 20 with a timeline for Workday to provide a list of customers who have enabled its optional AI features.
