The Ninth Circuit ruled that 42 U.S.C. § 1981 prohibits discrimination in hiring against United States citizens on the basis of their citizenship in Rajaram, et al. v. Meta Platforms Inc ., 105 F.4th 1179 (9th Cir. 2024). The district court had previously ruled that the plaintiff lacked standing to sue under the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The plaintiff, a naturalized U.S. citizen who had unsuccessfully applied for multiple open positions at Facebook parent company Meta, Inc., brought a putative class action under § 1981 alleging employment discrimination. The plaintiff claimed that the defendant refused to hire him because it preferred to hire non-citizens holding H- 1B visas to whom it can pay lower wages, and that this preference was discriminatory against U.S. citizens applying for employment. The Court of Appeals’ decision reversed the district court’s ruling that § 1981 does not bar discrimination based on U.S. citizenship and thus the plaintiff lacked standing to sue under the Civil Rights Act. The Ninth Circuit noted that under the statute, which guarantees treatment equal to that “enjoyed by white citizens” for “all persons,” a violation arises when a group, such as noncitizens (including H-1B visa holders) receives better treatment than “white citizens” through “a greater right to make contracts,” e.g., enter into employment. Id. at 1182. Meta argued that § 1981’s anti-discrimination provision is limited to race and alienage because it only prohibits treatment less favorable than that of “white citizens,” which means that only individuals seeking to achieve the same rights as those held by “white citizens” can make claims under this provision. Id. The Ninth Circuit rejected this reading of the statute, explaining that the statute’s guarantee of access to the “same rights” as those of “white citizens” meant that granting less or more than the same rights was a violation. Id. Because Meta allegedly preferred to hire non-citizens, granting them more rights to enter into an employment contract than those afforded to U.S. citizens, the Ninth Circuit ruled that this could produce an injury to a U.S. citizen. Id. It found Meta’s additional arguments — citing legislative history and the enactment of anti-immigrant discrimination law, and contending that expanding the statute to include additional categories of injuries would give rise to “nonsensical results” — unconvincing, and remanded the case. Id. at 1185-87. The defendant’s dismissal efforts in Sogbuyi-Whitney, et al. v. Caremark PhC LLC , 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16916 (D.R.I. Jan. 29, 2024), were also in vain. There, the plaintiffs, a group of Quality Assurance Consultants (QAs) for Gardner Resources Consulting, which placed them with CVS to test electronic medical recordkeeping systems, filed a class action alleging race discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The plaintiffs, both Black women, alleged that they were excluded from meetings and opportunities given to South Asian team members. The plaintiffs were subsequently laid off in mid-2022, and asserted that a majority of the laid-off employees were Black and none were South Asian. The defendants unsuccessfully moved for dismissal on two grounds, arguing (i) that the complaint amounted to a shotgun pleading, and (ii) that plaintiffs failed to exhaust their administrative remedies. In allowing the case to proceed through discovery, the court disagreed with the defendants’ contention that the complaint was designed to confuse or overwhelm the defendants, and thus could not be considered a “shotgun pleading.” Id. at *5. Further, while the defendants argued that the plaintiffs’ November 2022 EEOC filing date precluded them from raising any allegedly discriminatory behavior before January 6, 2022, the court found that the continuing violation doctrine – allowing claims based on ongoing discrimination to proceed notwithstanding temporal cutoffs – was appropriately applied here. Finally, the court denied the defendant’s motion to dismiss the class-wide allegations, explaining that dismissal at this stage was disfavored, and that the plaintiffs had shown enough employees were possibly effected sufficient to create numerosity under Rule 23. Meanwhile, in Zeman, et al. v. Twitter, Inc. , 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 71167 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 18, 2024), the defendants luck finally ran out. Following the court’s partial dismissal of its lawsuit last year, the plaintiff, a former Senior Manager at Twitter, reasserted this class action against Twitter and its successor, X Corp., once again raising age discrimination claims for violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) and the New York State Human Rights Law (NYSHRL). As with the initial complaint, the plaintiff alleged Twitter unlawfully targeted him and other employees over 50 during its 2023 mass layoff following Elon Musk’s acquisition of the company. In response to deficiencies from the initial complaint, the plaintiff asserted that he and the putative class “performed as well if not better . . . than employees under the age of 50 who were not laid off,” leaving no articulable business reason for their terminations. Id. at *8. Notwithstanding the improved pleadings, Twitter moved again to dismiss, arguing the plaintiff’s allegations did not support a plausible inference of intentional age discrimination. In denying the motion, the court distinguished the First Amended Complaint (FAC) from the authority relied on by Twitter in its briefings, observing that unlike the cited authority, the FAC contained sufficiently specific allegations to pass muster, including through its reliance on statistical allegations. The court also rejected Twitter’s objections to the plaintiff’s standing, concluding that the claims emanated from the collective impact of Twitter’s actions rather than any one individual circumstance, thereby
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Duane Morris Discrimination Class Action Review – 2025
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