Extract from Charles Toutant’s article “Did an AI Discriminate in Hiring? Employer Faces Lawsuit”
A New York biopharmaceutical company has been accused in a suit of evaluating job applicants using an artificial-intelligence hiring tool that discriminates against certain job applicants.
Immunovant Inc. faces claims of race, gender and age discrimination in a suit by Sheilah Johnson-Rocah, who attributes the alleged unlawful conduct to a decision to employ automated systems to sort through the high volume of applications for vacant positions.
But one legal observer said the AI claims are not well-supported, and might have been included simply to attract attention.
Johnson-Rocah, who is over African-American, over 40 and female, said she has applied multiple times to Immunovant but has concluded that seeking employment there is futile due to the company’s use of discriminatory AI tools. But her complaint is short on substance concerning the allegations related to AI, said Julie Levinson Werner, a labor and employment lawyer at Lowenstein Sandler.
