A federal judge in New York agreed Monday to dismiss part of a class action lawsuit that claimed an information technology company engaged in workforce discrimination on the basis of U.S. citizenship by favoring workers from South Asia over American citizens.
Markus Meyenhofer and Andrew Ragland filed the class action lawsuit against Larsen & Toubro Infotech Ltd., an IT consulting company based in Mumbai, India, in December 2019. They claimed the company regularly passed over U.S. citizens for jobs and promotions, preferring instead to “hire, promote and retain persons of South Asian descent from India who are in the United States with work visas.”
Such actions constituted a violation of their civil rights, Meyenhofer and Ragland argued. Both men are former Larsen & Toubro employees.
U.S. citizens are not a specifically “protected class” under current civil rights laws, though, and therefore they cannot be legally considered discriminated against, U.S. District Judge Alison J. Nathan found.
For that reason, Judge Nathan granted Larsen & Toubro’s motion to dismiss those claims, but she refused to dismiss the entire workforce discrimination class action lawsuit.
Meyenhofer and Ragland had also accused the company of racial bias and that part of the class action lawsuit can proceed, the judge ruled.
Meyenhofer claims Larsen & Toubro decided not to hire him for a position as a wealth management consultant because he is white, while an estimated 95% of the company’s workforce is of South Asian descent.
Lawyers for Larsen & Toubro argued to the Court that the company was not actually responsible for the decision not to hire Meyenhofer. An outside recruiting and staffing agency, Quantum, handles the hiring, Larsen & Toubro said.
Judge Nathan didn’t buy that argument and pointed out in her ruling that, while Meyenhofer submitted his application through Quantum, “it was for a position that entailed employment by [Larsen & Toubro Infotech] and for which he completed a secondary interview with LTI, and he was told by LTI that he would receive follow up correspondence.”
Ragland, on the other hand, in an independent contractor whose contract with Larsen & Toubro Infotech was not renewed. He argued that meant he had been subjected to workforce discrimination in hiring, he said.
Judge Nathan disagreed and dismissed his claim against the company. She said the class action lawsuit he filed made it clear “he was hired by LTI for the only position to which he applied.”
“He therefore cannot state a claim for hiring discrimination because he has not shown that he was ‘denied the job’ to ‘which he applied,’” Nathan wrote in her opinion. “Plaintiff Ragland may assert these allegations in support of his claims that defendants failed to promote him and fired him for discriminatory purposes … but he cannot claim that defendants failed to hire him for discriminatory purposes.”
Larsen & Toubro’s lawyers also tried to get the judge to strike references to alleged visa fraud and federal investigations of the company made in the class action lawsuit.
Meyenhofer and Ragland claim their former employer is in the habit of keeping a large number of “visa ready workers” on standby to fill its staffing needs in a way that runs counter to federal regulations. This visa fraud, the plaintiffs say, is how the company can continue pushing U.S. workers aside in favor of South Asians.
The judge declined to strike those allegations from the workforce discrimination class action lawsuit, saying that while potentially embarrassing, the company’s lawyers failed to show how the accusations could prejudice them in the case.
Have you experienced workforce discrimination? Have you been passed over for a job because you are a U.S. citizen? Tell us about it in the comment section below.
Plaintiff and the proposed Class Members are represented by Daniel Kotchen and Daniel Low of Kotchen & Low LLP.
The Workforce Discrimination Class Action Lawsuit is Markus Meyenhofer, et al. v. Larsen & Toubro Infotech Ltd., et al., Case No. 1:19-cv-09349, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
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