California District Court Rules That Software Vendor Is Subject to Title VII, the ADA, the ADEA

On July 12, 2024, in a keenly awaited decision, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California determined that Workday, Inc. (“Workday”), a provider of AI-infused human resources (HR) software, can be held liable under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA), and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) (collectively the “Anti-Discrimination Laws”) as an agent of the corporate clients that hire Workday to screen and source candidates for employment by utilizing its AI-infused decision-making tools.

In noting that “[d]rawing an artificial distinction between software decisionmakers and human decisionmakers would potentially gut anti-discrimination laws in the modern era,” the court underscored the EEOC’s admonition, which we discussed in our previous post, that…