Amazon Discrimination Lawsuits: Disability, Pay, and Race

Amazon is facing a cluster of active discrimination lawsuits and federal investigations in 2025 and 2026, with claims that span disability accommodations, pregnancy, equal pay for women in corporate roles, and racial treatment of warehouse workers. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has issued two separate findings of systemic, nationwide violations; the New Jersey Attorney General has sued the company in state court; and private class actions are moving forward in New York, Washington, and elsewhere.

Two EEOC Systemic Findings in Early 2026

In April 2026, the EEOC issued a determination concluding that Amazon had engaged in “systemic, nationwide violations” of the Americans with Disabilities Act for more than six years in its treatment of hourly warehouse workers.¹ The agency identified specific practices: forcing employees onto unpaid leave and then penalizing or firing them for exhausting unpaid time off while on that forced leave, demanding excessive medical documentation, failing to train managers who had authority to deny accommodation requests, and failing to ensure that granted accommodations were actually implemented on the warehouse floor.

Two months earlier, in February 2026, the EEOC separately found that Amazon had systematically violated the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act by failing to accommodate pregnancy- and childbirth-related limitations and, in some cases, pushing pregnant employees onto leave instead of making workplace adjustments.¹ Both findings came out of multi-year investigations. As of mid-2026, there is no public indication that the EEOC has moved to conciliation or filed its own suit on either determination, but both have been cited extensively in private litigation.

Disability Class Actions in New York and Washington

Lyster v. Amazon.com Services LLC

On November 12, 2025, A Better Balance and the firm Vladeck, Raskin & Clark filed a class action in the Southern District of New York on behalf of lead plaintiff Cayla Lyster and thousands of hourly Amazon warehouse workers across the state.² The suit targets Amazon’s centralized attendance system, which automatically deducts “Unpaid Time Off” points when workers miss shifts, including absences tied to pending disability accommodation requests. Workers who accumulate enough point deductions face termination.

Lyster, who has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, filed an EEOC charge in September 2024. In May 2025 the agency found reasonable cause, concluding that Amazon’s practice of sending negative attendance notices to employees awaiting accommodations had a “chilling effect” on their legal rights.³ The complaint also alleges supervisors made derogatory comments about Lyster’s disability and that Amazon arbitrarily rescinded permanent accommodations she had been granted. The claims arise under the ADA, the New York State Human Rights Law, and New York’s Lawful Absence Law.⁴

Nine-Employee Case in Seattle

Five weeks earlier, on October 20, 2025, nine Amazon employees ranging from warehouse workers to software engineers filed a proposed class action in the Western District of Washington alleging systematic ADA violations.⁵ Among the named plaintiffs:

Ashley Cook, a cloud engineer and military veteran, alleged she was placed on unpaid leave against her will after her remote work requests were ignored.
Amy Rooker, an investment manager in Amazon’s cloud division, alleged she was terminated after her remote work request was denied.
David Ottenweller, a warehouse worker, alleged he was fired after being hospitalized for a mental health disability.
Michelle Grissom, also a warehouse worker, alleged she was placed on unpaid leave and then terminated after requesting accommodations for seizure symptoms.

The plaintiffs also target Amazon’s “A to Z” app, which employees use to submit accommodation requests. They claim the app causes technical glitches and significant delays, that Amazon uses artificial intelligence in the accommodations process, and that the company suppresses employee communication about these issues by deleting Slack messages.⁵ In a November 2025 response, Amazon called the case “fundamentally flawed” and the allegations “untrue and intentionally misleading,” while acknowledging it was testing AI for administrative tasks but not for making final accommodation decisions.

The Dispute Over Automated Accommodation Decisions

The disability cases share a common thread: how Amazon handles the sheer volume of accommodation requests. An internal document from 2024 put the figure at roughly 725 per day, or about 255,000 a year.⁵ Those requests route to an off-site Disability Leave Services department that critics describe as disconnected from on-site managers and HR staff.⁶

In mid-2025, more than 200 disabled Amazon corporate employees sent a 33-page letter to company executives alleging that “automated” or “semi-automated” systems were being used to process and deny requests without meaningful human engagement. An internal poll cited in the letter found that 71% of respondents said more than half of their accommodation requests had been denied or unmet, and 92% reported a lack of an accessible accommodation process. Amazon rejected the claims, saying its process is “not automated or semi-automated,” that decisions are “driven by empathy” and handled by a dedicated disability and leave services team, and that the survey represented a “small number of unverified employees.”⁷

Former EEOC Chair Charlotte Burrows said “more and more employees are in a situation where they are looking to vindicate their rights under the law and cannot get relief because they’re in an automated process that doesn’t allow them to appeal to a person.”⁵ A group called Disabled Employees United, which represents 662 disabled Amazon corporate workers, has been organizing for unionization; at least 140 of its members have received right-to-sue notices from the EEOC.

New Jersey Attorney General Sues Amazon

On October 22, 2025, New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin and the state Division on Civil Rights filed a 10-count complaint against Amazon in New Jersey Superior Court, alleging a widespread pattern of discrimination against pregnant workers and employees with disabilities at dozens of the company’s warehouses in the state.⁸ Over a recent two-year stretch, according to the complaint, New Jersey warehouse employees submitted more than 27,000 requests for disability- and pregnancy-related accommodations.

The state alleges Amazon automatically placed workers on unpaid leave when they requested accommodations and kept them on leave even after denying those requests.⁹ The complaint also alleges Amazon imposed a rigid seven-day deadline for medical documentation, closed requests when workers couldn’t meet it, applied standard productivity quotas to workers with approved accommodations, and fired workers shortly after they asked for help.¹⁰

Specific cases in the complaint include a worker who was denied a request to be moved from a packing job that required lifting 50-pound loads and then miscarried on the job, and a worker who had been granted a 15-pound weight restriction and extra breaks but was terminated a month later because those accommodations pushed her productivity scores below the company’s threshold.⁹

Amazon denied the allegations. Spokesperson Kelly Nantel said “ensuring the health and well-being of our employees is our top priority,” and the company said it has processed more than 72,500 pregnancy accommodation requests in U.S. operations since 2022, with a current approval rate exceeding 99%. Amazon also noted it offers up to 20 weeks of fully paid leave for eligible birthing parents.¹¹ The case is pending.

Wilmuth v. Amazon: Gender Pay Class Action

In November 2023, three Amazon corporate employees, Caroline Wilmuth, Katherine Schomer, and Erin Combs, filed what their lawyers described as the first-ever equal pay class action against the company in the Western District of Washington.¹² All three worked in Amazon’s corporate research and strategy division. They allege Amazon systematically assigned women lower “job codes” and “job levels” than men doing comparable work, which translated into lower pay and fewer promotions.

The complaint alleges that a male researcher on Wilmuth’s team earned roughly 150% of Schomer’s salary. The plaintiffs also say an internal 2023 investigation found that a reorganization of their team, which shifted direct reports to a male executive, had a “disparate impact” on women, and that a male colleague acknowledged during the probe that the reorganization was “discriminatory, done across gender lines.”¹³

Each plaintiff alleges retaliation. Wilmuth says she was fired while on approved short-term disability leave. Combs says she was demoted after returning from protected leave. Schomer says she was placed on a performance improvement plan upon return, which disqualified her from stock grants and raises.¹⁴

Amazon moved to dismiss, arguing the proposed class was overbroad and some claims were time-barred. In December 2024, U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead rejected those arguments and allowed the case to proceed.¹⁴ Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser said the company believed the claims were false and would “demonstrate that through the legal process.”¹³ Fact discovery was scheduled to close in March 2026, with the plaintiffs’ motion for class certification due by September 30, 2026.¹⁵

Racial Discrimination Claims

Background Check Case in Massachusetts

In 2018, six Black and Latino former Amazon delivery drivers filed a class action, initially before the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination and later in Suffolk Superior Court, alleging that a change in Amazon’s background check policy led to their mass termination in 2016 over old and minor offenses.¹⁶ They argued the policy had a disparate impact on workers of color because Black and Latino individuals are arrested and incarcerated at disproportionately higher rates, which means background screens inevitably knock out minority applicants more heavily. The suit sought to represent a statewide class of hundreds of drivers.¹⁷

Amazon defended the screening as necessary for “safety and customer trust,” saying it focused on job-related criminal and motor vehicle convictions and did not consider race or other protected characteristics.¹⁶ The case, captioned Andrews v. Amazon.com Inc., was removed to federal court in early 2019 and voluntarily dismissed through a joint filing in July 2021. The parties did not disclose whether they reached a settlement.¹⁷

Warehouse Hostility Complaints

Black employees at Amazon’s MDW2 fulfillment center in Joliet, Illinois, filed an EEOC complaint alleging a racially hostile environment that has persisted since late 2021, including racist death threats written in bathroom stalls and management’s failure to act when employees wore clothing featuring the Confederate flag. Reporting by the Los Angeles Times described two large federal racial bias cases involving hundreds of Black employees at Amazon warehouses in Ontario and Moreno Valley, California, characterized as the two largest such cases brought by the federal government in California in the prior decade. Those cases allege Black workers faced racial insults and discriminatory treatment from coworkers and supervisors.¹⁸

Amazon’s Position and the Current Posture

Amazon has consistently denied wrongdoing across these matters. It points to accommodation approval rates, paid leave benefits, and policies it says do not consider race, sex, or disability. Those defenses now face two EEOC systemic findings that could ripen into federal enforcement, a state attorney general lawsuit in New Jersey, two disability class actions moving through federal court, a gender pay class action approaching class certification, and open racial discrimination complaints at warehouses in Illinois and California. The outcomes depend on cases that, for now, are still being litigated.

1
A Better Balance. Federal Agency Finds Amazon Is Systemically Violating Disabled Workers’ Rights
2
A Better Balance. Amazon Workers File Class Action Holding the Behemoth Accountable for Its Treatment of Warehouse Employees With Disabilities
3
Lyster v. Amazon.com Services LLC. Complaint, Case No. 1:25-cv-09423
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Top Class Actions. Class Action Alleges Amazon Punishes Employees Over Disability Requests
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Yahoo Finance. Amazon Workers With Disabilities File Suit Against Tech Giant Alleging Systematic Discrimination
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United for Respect. Amazon Accommodations Report
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The Guardian. Disabled Amazon Workers Discrimination
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New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Attorney General Platkin and Division on Civil Rights File Complaint Against Amazon Alleging Widespread Pattern of Pregnancy and Disability Discrimination
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New Jersey Monitor. Amazon Pregnant Workers Lawsuit
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New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Platkin v. Amazon Filed Complaint
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ABC7NY. New Jersey Attorney General Files Complaint Accusing Amazon of Discrimination Against Pregnant, Disabled Workers
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Outten & Golden. Women File Landmark Equal Pay Class Action Against Amazon
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CNBC. Amazon Sued by Three Employees Who Allege Gender Discrimination
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Courthouse News Service. Judge Rejects Amazon Attempt to Dismiss Gender Pay Disparity Class Action
15
Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. Wilmuth v. Amazon.com, Inc.
16
WBUR. Fired Amazon Delivery Drivers Allege Racial Discrimination in Lawsuit
17
Reuters. Black, Latino Amazon Drivers Withdraw Lawsuit Over Background Checks
18
McCune Law Group. Amazon Warehouse Discrimination