Amazon Seeks Dismissal of Employee Age Bias Class Action Lawsuit

Amazon.com Inc. recently filed a dismissal motion, aiming to escape a class action in California federal court which accuses the company of placing Facebook job ads which are hidden from older workers.

In the proposed Amazon class action, the Communications Workers of America and several workers accuse Amazon, T-Mobile, and other companies of blocking older workers from seeing job ads on Facebook.

The plaintiffs argue that this conduct is in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act by showing bias against older job seeking adults.

The plaintiffs have amended their complaint multiple times, most recently in August after Amazon filed a motion to dismiss.

Amazon claims that the plaintiffs failed to sufficiently argue that it placed discriminating ads on Facebook, especially since all job offers were available on websites.

“And plaintiffs allege nothing to suggest that defendants discouraged anyone over the age of 40 from applying for any position,” Amazon argued in their dismissal motion. “They do not allege that age filters applied to all of defendants’ job ads on Facebook. Nor do they allege that Facebook was the only job ad platform defendants used.”

The company also states that former named plaintiff Renia Hudson dropped her claims after realizing that Amazon had offered her a job which she learned of through Facebook. Amazon claims that Hudson did not respond to the job offer or follow up attempts. However, she later accepted another job.

Plaintiff counsel rejects Amazon’s arguments, calling them a “red herring.” The attorneys for plaintiffs argue that Hudson is not involved in the class action anymore and that arguments should only address current, relevant plaintiffs.

The company elaborates on their arguments by stating that the plaintiffs failed to allege that Facebook was the only platform the job ads were on or that they never saw the job ads on other websites.

Additionally, the applicants allegedly fail to state their qualifications for the jobs advertised, and “thus, members of plaintiffs’ putative class, like former plaintiff Hudson—and others in the protected age category—may have learned of, applied for, and received offers of employment for the positions that were the subject of the alleged ads described in the third amended complaint.”

Finally, Amazon also takes issue with the proposed Class which would allegedly cover millions of individuals who might have searched for a job on Facebook, no matter how casually. The online retailer claims that the Class would cover individuals with all qualifications, locations, ages, and backgrounds.

“This definition would encompass people who did not even use Facebook to search for employment. It would also sweep in countless passive persons who only infrequently used their Facebook accounts, or did not do so when the alleged advertisements were in use and thus could not possibly have been injured by the alleged conduct,” Amazon claims.

The Communications Workers of America and the named plaintiffs are represented in-­house by Patricia Shea and Katherine A. Roe; and by Jahan C. Sagafi, P. David Lopez, Peter Romer-­Friedman, Adam T. Klein, Robert N. Fisher and Jared W. 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.

UPDATE: On Jan. 16, 2019, Amazon 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.