CWA Expands Lawsuit against Companies for Excluding Older Workers from Facebook Job Ads

In December, CWA filed a class action lawsuit against T-Mobile US, Amazon.com, Inc., Cox Communications and Media Group, and hundreds of other large employers for illegally excluding older workers from receiving job ads on Facebook for open positions at their companies. This week, the lawsuit is expanding.

CWA is adding federal age bias claims for older workers nationwide, alleging Facebook's algorithm discriminates against older workers, and filing age bias charges with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against Facebook and 37 other companies.

Through an in-depth investigation, CWA discovered that hundreds of employers and employment agencies are illegally targeting their employment ads on Facebook to exclude older workers who fall outside specified age ranges (such as ages 18 to 40, or ages 22 to 45), purposely preventing these older workers from seeing the ads or pursuing job opportunities. The Complaint alleges that this practice constitutes a violation of federal, state, and local laws that bar age discrimination in employment advertising, recruiting, and hiring.

A major New York Times and ProPublica investigation highlighted the practices and lawsuit. In the aftermath of the lawsuit, the Senate Aging Committee, led by Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Bob Casey, Jr., (D-Penn.), launched a bipartisan investigation of age bias by social media companies, including Facebook, that recruit workers online. 

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