Workday seeks to decertify AI hiring bias collective

Workday asked a federal judge to decertify the age-discrimination collective, which includes more than 15,000 job applicants.[1] It also wants the claims of applicants who joined the collective dismissed without prejudice, which would allow them to pursue separate cases.[1] Workday says the plaintiffs face a heavier burden 18 months after preliminary certification and that opt-in plaintiffs must provide substantial evidence they are similarly situated in ways material to their claims.[1] The company says they cannot meet that burden.[1] The court denied the motion.[4]

Workday argues applicants have not shown that its AI tools unfairly screened out older candidates or evaluated most of their applications.[1] It also says applicants have not shown that the tools evaluated or harmed them, or caused discriminatory hiring outcomes.[2] The company’s argument is that employers configure and use its tools differently, then make their own hiring decisions, so the claims require individual review rather than one collective case.[1][2] Workday also says the three challenged features were built by different companies, trained on different data, and operated differently across customers, jobs and time.[2]

The lawsuit alleged that Workday’s AI hiring tools discriminate against Black applicants, women, people with disabilities and applicants aged 40 and older.[2] The court granted Mobley’s motion for preliminary certification after finding that Mobley had substantially alleged a unified policy of using Workday’s AI recommendation system to score, sort, rank or screen applicants.[3] The court identified whether the system had a disparate impact on applicants over 40 as the critical issue in Mobley’s claim.[3] Mobley allegedly was denied employment for every one of the more than 100 applications he submitted to companies using Workday’s platform.[3] A hearing was set for March 9, 2027.[4]