AI hiring discrimination lawsuits: Mobley v. Workday and EEOC v. iTutorGroup

Two US cases come up whenever people search for an AI hiring bias lawsuit. Mobley v. Workday is a federal court case that says Workday's AI screening tools work against older, Black and disabled applicants. EEOC v. iTutorGroup ended in a settlement after a company's application software rejected older applicants automatically. This page sets out what each case is about and what the courts and the EEOC have actually said, for job seekers and for employers that use screening software.

The short answer: Mobley v. Workday is still open. The court has not decided whether Workday's tools discriminate. It has let the age claim go ahead as a nationwide collective action that more than 15,000 people have joined, and class certification on the other claims will be argued in 2027 (court orders on GovInfo). iTutorGroup paid $365,000 to settle the EEOC's age discrimination suit in 2023 (EEOC).

Mobley v. Workday: what the case is about

Derek Mobley sued Workday in 2023 in the federal court for the Northern District of California (case 3:23-cv-00770). He says he applied for many jobs through employers that use Workday and was turned down almost every time without an interview. The claims are disparate impact claims: that the tools, whatever anyone intended, screen out applicants on the basis of race (Title VII), disability (the ADA) and age (the ADEA).

The tools named in the court's orders are:

• Candidate Skills Match: part of Workday Recruiting. It pulls the skills from the employer's job posting and from the applicant's materials and reports how well they match.
• Spotlight and Fetch: features from HiredScore, which Workday bought in 2024. Spotlight helps employers review candidates against a role, and Fetch suggests possible candidates to employers. In July 2025 the court ruled that, at this stage, these later features are inside the case too.

What the court has decided so far

Date	Ruling
2024	Job applicants can bring age disparate impact claims under the ADEA. The court repeated this in March 2026 when Workday raised it again.
16 May 2025	The age claim may go ahead as a nationwide collective action. The court said the common question is whether the AI recommendation system has a disparate impact on applicants over 40, and that a very large collective is no reason to refuse notice.
29 Jul 2025	Applicants scored, sorted, ranked or screened with the HiredScore features are part of the collective at this stage.
Oct to Nov 2025	Workday must give the plaintiffs a list of employers that turned on its AI features from 24 September 2020. Notice goes out by social media, with the long notice on the plaintiffs' lawyers' website.
Jan to Mar 2026	Three more named plaintiffs and new claims (sex discrimination under Title VII and claims under California's Fair Employment and Housing Act) were added. AARP was allowed to file a brief supporting the plaintiffs.
29 May 2026	Workday's bias-testing data is protected by attorney-client privilege, because its lawyers curated the data and used the results to give legal advice. Workday must hand over its EEO-1 and federal contractor (OFCCP) records, which the court found relevant to what Workday knew about demographic gaps.
22 Jun 2026	The California claims go ahead, because the tools are said to be built and run from Workday's California headquarters. Under California law a business acting as an employer's agent can be directly liable for its own part in hiring decisions. One plaintiff's race claim and the claims about Workday's own hiring were dismissed.
Oct to Nov 2026	More than 15,000 people have opted into the age collective. Discovery disputes continue over customer contracts, HiredScore records and depositions.

Who is in the age collective?

The collective the court certified on a preliminary basis covers people aged 40 and over who, from 24 September 2020 onwards, applied for jobs through Workday's job application platform and were denied employment recommendations. Preliminary means the question is not settled: Workday can ask the court to decertify the collective after discovery, and each person would then have to bring a claim alone. The court's notice explains how to join, so check the current notice or the court docket rather than relying on older articles.

What happens next

Under the schedule the judge set in July 2026, the plaintiffs moved on 14 September 2026 to certify classes for the Title VII, ADA and California claims. Workday's opposition and its motion to decertify the age collective are due on 10 November 2026, the plaintiffs reply by 8 December 2026 and answer the decertification motion by 6 January 2027, and the hearing is set for 9 March 2027. None of this decides whether the tools discriminate. That comes later, at trial or in a settlement.

EEOC v. iTutorGroup: an automatic age cut-off

iTutorGroup hired US-based tutors to teach English online to students in China. According to the EEOC's lawsuit, its application software was set to reject women aged 55 or over and men aged 60 or over automatically, and more than 200 qualified US applicants were turned away because of their age. The case settled in September 2023 for $365,000 for the rejected applicants. The company also agreed to new anti-discrimination training and policies, a ban on asking applicants for their birth dates, at least five years of EEOC monitoring, and to contact and interview the rejected applicants if it starts hiring in the US again (EEOC press release, 11 September 2023).

This was a fixed rule written into the software, not a model that learned a pattern. The point for employers is the same: the law looks at what the hiring process does to applicants, and a hard-coded age filter is plain age discrimination.

What these cases mean in practice

• Employers: using a vendor's tool does not move the risk to the vendor. Mobley is about whether the vendor can be liable as well, not instead. Know which screening features are switched on in your applicant tracking system, test outcomes by age, sex, race and disability, and keep a person reviewing rejections. Bias testing done with your lawyers may be privileged, as the Workday ruling shows, but federal contractor and EEO-1 records were ordered disclosed.
• Applicants: if you were rejected quickly and repeatedly by employers using the same platform, note the employers, dates and roles. You can file a charge with the EEOC, or with a state agency, within the deadlines that apply to you.
• Everyone: both cases turn on long-standing laws (Title VII, the ADEA, the ADA and state law), not on new AI statutes.

For the federal rules behind these claims, see AI and workplace discrimination under US federal law. For laws written specifically for AI hiring tools, see NYC Local Law 144 and Illinois AI hiring laws, and for the wider picture AI in hiring.

This page is general information based on the court orders published on GovInfo up to 3 November 2026 and the EEOC's press release, checked on 9 November 2026. The claims in Mobley v. Workday are allegations that have not been proven. This is not legal advice.