dailynewsnblog
By Daniel Wiessner
July 22 (Reuters) – A novel lawsuit claiming that Meta Platforms relied on discriminatory AI tools to select employees for layoffs highlights the problems workers face in suing employers over the new technology, including proving how it was actually used.
The case helps illustrate why a widely predicted wave of employment lawsuits over AI use has yet to arrive. Legal experts say workers often have little understanding of how AI systems are used in the workplace and many have also signed away their right to sue in court, agreeing instead to resolve workplace disputes through a private process called arbitration that can keep such claims from ever being tested publicly.
In a ruling last week declining to block Meta from finalizing the terminations of 26 people who sued, U.S. District Judge William Orrick identified a fundamental obstacle for plaintiffs who allege that AI discriminated against them: “they were not in the rooms where it happened.”
That means workers like the Meta employees, who claim they were targeted for layoffs because they have disabilities or took medical or family leave, often cannot muster the evidence of wrongdoing necessary to quickly secure a win in court.
And they face another obstacle: Like a majority of U.S. workers, the plaintiffs are bound by an arbitration agreement, meaning they cannot band together in a class action, put their case before a jury, or push for a multimillion-dollar settlement in open court.
ARBITRATION AGREEMENTS BLOCK LAWSUITS
Companies generally prefer arbitration, which they say is a faster, cheaper alternative to court, while worker advocates say it often favors employers and discourages workers from bringing claims. The arbitration process is also confidential, so it can shield unfavorable evidence unearthed in an individual case from wider disclosure.
“Even if you establish that a particular system would produce discriminatory outcomes left and right, you have no way of sharing that information with other employees,” said Christine Webber, co-chair of the civil rights and employment practice at plaintiffs’ firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll. Webber’s firm is not involved in the Meta case.
Webber and other plaintiffs’ lawyers said those hurdles explain the lack of high-profile court cases involving employers’ use of AI even as it becomes routine, and why even the lawsuit against Meta seeking only temporary relief is unusual.
One of the few cases to emerge over companies’ workplace use of AI tools involves Workday, which is facing claims that its popular HR management software unlawfully filtered out applicants for jobs at other companies based on race, age and disability. Arbitration is not an issue in that case because Workday does not have agreements with its customers’ job applicants. Workday denies the allegations.
