Amazon Says Job Ads Class Action Lawsuit Should be Tossed

Top Class Actions’s website and social media posts use affiliate links. If you make a purchase using such links, we may receive a commission, but it will not result in any additional charges to you. Please review our Affiliate Link Disclosure for more information.

Amazon has asked a federal court to dismiss a class action lawsuit that claims the online retailer intentionally blocks older workers from seeing job advertisements on Facebook.

Lead plaintiffs allege that Amazon uses Facebook to place help wanted ads. The problem, according to older workers and advocacy group Communications Workers of America, is that Amazon sought to hide these ads from older Facebook users.

Amazon contends that the job ads class action lawsuit, which also includes T­-Mobile, Cox Communications Inc. and Cox Media Group Inc. as defendants, fails to state adequate claims.

“At bottom, plaintiffs do not contest that Amazon and other defendants make their job ads available to all persons regardless of age through a wide variety of outlets, including publicly available websites, e.g., www.amazonjobs.com,” argued the online retail giant in its motion to dismiss.

“Instead, they allege that by using their limited advertising budgets to purchase targeted advertisements that may reach different segments of the population based on a variety of characteristics (including age), in addition to publicizing these positions more broadly, defendants engage in unlawful age discrimination.”

Further, Amazon says the plaintiffs in the Amazon job ads class action lawsuit cannot be heard in the California court where their claims are pending.

Amazon points out that none of the lead plaintiffs live in California and argues that, as a result, the federal court in California does not have jurisdiction to hear their claims.

In response, the plaintiffs’ attorney told Law360 “The reply brief doubles down on the notion that America’s largest employers can refuse to advertise jobs via social media to older workers.”

“That same principle applies presumably to race, gender and other protected classes, and it would be very troubling if the law allowed America’s largest companies to exclude workers from receiving their job ads based on who they are,” the plaintiffs’ attorney continued. “I think what’s very telling in the brief is that the defendants make very little argument as to why the [Age Discrimination in Employment Act] should permit this practice of excluding people from getting jobs ads based on their age.”

The Amazon job ads class action lawsuit was initiated in December 2017. The plaintiffs alleged that the online retailer, along with a number of other companies, illegally discriminated against workers who are over the age of 40 by specifically excluding them from seeing job postings through Facebook.

The Amazon class action lawsuit has faced dismissal motions before, similarly arguing that the company did nothing to discourage older workers from applying.

The Amazon age discrimination class action was amended as recently as March 2018.

The Amazon job ads class action lawsuit seeks to represent workers who may have been harmed by the alleged age discrimination.

The Communications Workers of America and the named plaintiffs are represented in-­house by Patricia Shea and Katherine A. Roe, and by Peter Romer-Friedman, P. David Lopez, Jahan Sagafi, Adam Klein, Robert Fisher and Jared Goldman of Outten & Golden LLP.

The Amazon Job Ads Class Action Lawsuit is Communications Workers of America, et al. v. T-­Mobile US Inc., et al., Case No. 5:17­-cv-­07232, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.