Judge orders Workday to supply an exhaustive list of employers that enabled AI hiring tech

Dive Brief:

• Workday Inc. must provide a list of customers who enabled HiredScore artificial intelligence features in their hiring process, even though the company acquired the technology after the original complaint was filed, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled Tuesday. 
• Previously, a plaintiff brought a lawsuit — which turned into a collective action — against Workday, alleging the AI-based applicant recommendation software had negatively affected candidates aged 40 and up in the hiring process.
• Tuesday’s order calls for the collective to include “individuals whose applications were scored, sorted, ranked, or screened using the HiredScore AI features.”

Dive Insight:

Workday claimed that the collective should only include individuals who were scored or ranked by its Candidate Skills Match. 

“Workday takes the position that there are material differences in the scoring algorithms between the HiredScore AI features and Candidate Skills Match” that would have affected the plaintiff, per the court documents. Workday also claimed that HiredScore was “a separate product, built on a wholly separate technology platform” that can run on any kind of applicant tracking software.

AI in hiring continues to be a point of contention in the employment law landscape. Notably, New York City restricted AI in hiring in 2022, with its laws going into effect in 2023. Any kind of automated decision-making tool must be audited, and all candidates should be notified of the use of the technology under the legislation.

New York City has been on the forefront of AI regulation, particularly when it comes to hiring, but California and Colorado are also slated to have AI hiring regulations on the books in 2026. 

Still, a gray area exists. Private companies supporting HR, like LinkedIn, are adding AI tools to assist recruiters, for example. 

Previously, per May court documents, “Workday has raised concerns that there may be logistical hurdles to identifying members of the collective.” Still, Judge Rita Lin said at the time, “On the current record, those challenges do not appear insurmountable.”

Workday must come up with a list of its customers who have enabled the technology by Aug. 20.