Assuming the AI screening vendor carries the discrimination risk
The vendor might be liable too. That is not the same as you being off the hook, and a shared lawsuit is still your lawsuit.
Not legal advice. Sally roasts behaviour and use-cases in general, never your specific situation, and nothing here replaces a real lawyer. The cases are real; what you do about them is between you and someone licensed to tell you.
Outsourcing candidate screening to an AI vendor and assuming any discrimination claim is the vendor's problem, not the employer's.
Mobley v. Workday, Inc.
No. 3:23-cv-00770 (N.D. Cal.), collective certified 2025 Ā· US (N.D. California)
A plaintiff alleged Workday's AI applicant-screening tools caused disparate-impact discrimination by age, race, and disability across many employers.
The court allowed the disparate-impact claim to proceed and held an AI vendor can be directly liable as an agent, then certified a nationwide collective. Undecided on the merits.
A court allowed a disparate-impact claim to proceed against an AI screening vendor on the theory that the vendor can be directly liable as an agent of the employers using it. That is a real shift in who can be sued. But read it the right way: it expands liability, it does not relocate it away from you.
This area is still being decided, with a nationwide collective certified. The safe reading for an employer is that you and your vendor can both be on the hook, so "we used a third-party tool" is not the shield people assume it is.
āYou outsourced the screening to dodge the risk, and the court invented a way to sue the vendor without letting you off either.ā
- 01Do your own bias auditing rather than relying on the vendor's assurances.
- 02Put contractual terms around testing, transparency, and liability with any screening vendor.
- 03Assume you remain responsible for who your hiring process screens out, tool or no tool.
Not legal advice. General commentary on a use-case, not your situation. Talk to a real lawyer before you act.