Meta Class Action Alleges Citizenship Bias in Hiring Process

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.

Meta Citizenship Bias Hiring Labor Class Action Overview: 

• Who: Facebook parent company Meta has been hit with a class action lawsuit by a U.S. job applicant. 
• Why: The applicant says Meta chooses to hire visa holders who it can pay less instead of U.S. citizens.
• Where: The class action lawsuit was filed in California federal court.

Facebook hires certain visa holders instead of U.S. citizens so it can pay them less, which leaves citizen-applicants without jobs, a new class action lawsuit alleges.

Plaintiff Purushothaman Rajaram filed the class action complaint against Meta Platforms Inc. May 17 in a California federal court, alleging violations of civil rights laws.

Rajaram, who is a job applicant and also a U.S. citizen, says Meta treated him differently because of his citizenship.

The lawsuit comes after the U.S. Department of Justice reached a settlement with Facebook for more than $14 million following claims that Facebook unlawfully favored applicants with temporary visas.

In his lawsuit, Rajaram alleges that, while visa holders make up “just a fraction” of the United States labor market, Facebook prefers to hire visa-dependent workers for certain U.S. positions as it can pay these employees less than American workers performing the same work.

Facebook Job Applicant Says He Was Rejected for Job Twice, According to Class Action

Rajaram says he applied for a job at Facebook on two occasions in 2020 and went through various stages of the interview process but was never hired. Instead of hiring him, Facebook hired an H-1B visa holder for the job, Rajaram alleges.

H-1B visas are designed to bring overseas workers to labor in “specialty occupations” if there aren’t enough U.S. workers to do a certain job. Facebook has mostly filed H-1B and PERM applications for software engineer positions, Rajaram says.

He also says H1-B workers make up 15% or more of Facebook’s workforce because Facebook pays them less.

“If Facebook in fact paid its visa workers the same as it paid American workers, it would have every incentive to hire, for all positions, the most qualified individual (regardless of his or her visa status),” Rajaram says.

He’s looking to represent anyone who applied for a job at Facebook in the United States either directly or through a third-party vendor and were not hired in the roles of software engineer, research scientist, data scientist, data engineer, engineering manager, PLM architect and/or PLM analyst.

Rajaram seeks certification of the class action, damages, fees, costs, an injunction forcing Facebook to change its hiring practices and a jury trial.

Meanwhile, a group of Facebook users in California have asked a judge to require Facebook’s parent company Meta to hand over documents from its internal investigation into data harvesting by Cambridge Analytica. 

What do you think of the allegations in this case? Let us know in the comments! 

Rajaram is represented by Daniel Lee Low of Kotchen and Low LLP.

The Facebook H1-B Class Action Lawsuit is Rajaram v. Meta Platforms Inc., Case No. 3:22-cv-02920, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

Read About More Class Action Lawsuits & Class Action Settlements:

• Wells Fargo Class Actions Allege Racial Discrimination
• Target, Krispy Kreme, Insomnia Cookies, Cannabis Co. Face Labor Claims
• Vail Commits $13.1M to Settle Wage, Labor Violations Class Action
• AdventHealth Pays $60K to End Claims Deaf Mom Was Denied Interpreter During Labor