A San Francisco judge cleared a proposed class action to proceed, in a case described as the first to broadly target the algorithms behind AI screening software.
A US federal judge has ruled that Workday must face claims its AI-powered hiring software screened out job applicants at other companies in ways that allegedly broke California law and a federal ban on disability discrimination.
The decision, by US District Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco, keeps alive a case that has become a test of whether the vendors behind algorithmic recruiting tools can be held liable for what those tools do.
Lin rejected Workday’s argument that California anti-discrimination law should not reach it when its software screens applicants who are based outside the state and applying for jobs elsewhere, according to Reuters.
That jurisdictional point mattered to the company, because much of its defence rests on the idea that it merely supplies software and does not itself do the hiring, in California or anywhere else.
