The HiredScore lawsuit is not a standalone case against HiredScore. It is Mobley v. Workday, Inc., a federal collective action in the Northern District of California alleging that AI-powered hiring tools discriminate against applicants based on age, race, and disability. HiredScore, the AI recruiting company Workday acquired in April 2024 for roughly $530 million, was drawn into the case in July 2025 when the court ruled that applicants screened by HiredScore’s tools must be included in the collective alongside those screened by Workday’s original algorithms.
How HiredScore Was Pulled Into the Case
Workday announced the HiredScore acquisition on February 27, 2024, and closed the deal on April 1, 2024, for approximately $530 million in cash.1SEC. Workday, Inc. SEC Filing HiredScore, founded by Athena Karp in 2012, had built AI tools focused on candidate matching, scoring, and what the company calls “talent orchestration,” and was already a certified Workday integration partner before the deal.2Workday Blog. Workday Acquisition of HiredScore – Conversation With Athena Karp
Once the Mobley litigation moved forward, Workday tried to keep HiredScore out of it. The company argued HiredScore was a “separate product, built on a wholly separate technology platform” with “material differences in the scoring algorithms” compared to Workday’s native Candidate Skills Match tool.3HR Dive. Workday Must Supply List of Employers Who Enabled HiredScore AI
Judge Rita Lin rejected that distinction on July 29, 2025. She ruled that Workday had integrated HiredScore into its offerings and that the collective is defined by the function the AI performs, meaning scoring, sorting, ranking, or screening applicants, not by a particular product name or technical architecture.4The People Space. Workday Ordered To Reveal AI Hiring Clients The court ordered Workday to compile a list of employer clients that had enabled HiredScore’s “Spotlight” and “Fetch” tools, along with clients using Candidate Skills Match, and to hand it to a third-party administrator by September 10, 2025. The administrator, rather than the plaintiffs directly, would use the list to identify individuals eligible to opt in.5Yahoo Finance. Judge Allows Workday Avoid Disclosing Full Customer List
What the Lawsuit Alleges
Derek Mobley, a Black man over 40 with a disability, filed the original case on February 21, 2023. He alleged that Workday’s algorithmic screening tools had rejected him from every one of the more than 100 jobs he applied to through the platform beginning in 2017, often within minutes and before any human reviewer saw his application.6Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. Mobley v. Workday, Inc.7Columbia Black Pre-Law Society. Mobley v. Workday and AI Discrimination Four additional plaintiffs, all over 40, later opted in with similar accounts.8GovInfo. Mobley v. Workday, Inc., Order on Collective Certification
The suit invokes Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act.9FindLaw. Derek Mobley v. Workday, Inc. The central legal question is whether a software vendor that builds hiring algorithms can be held liable under employment discrimination law the same way an employer or staffing agency can. Workday sells cloud-based HR software; it does not employ any of the applicants who move through its platform.
On July 12, 2024, Judge Lin issued a mixed ruling on Workday’s motion to dismiss. She rejected the theory that Workday was an “employment agency” and dismissed intentional discrimination claims. But she allowed the case to proceed on an “agent” theory, concluding Mobley had plausibly alleged that Workday’s employer-clients had “delegated their traditional function of rejecting candidates or advancing them to the interview stage to Workday.”9FindLaw. Derek Mobley v. Workday, Inc. Lin distinguished Workday’s AI from a passive tool like a spreadsheet, finding its algorithms actively participate in hiring decisions.10Seyfarth Shaw. Mobley v. Workday – Court Holds AI Service Providers Could Be Directly Liable Disparate impact claims under Title VII, the ADEA, and the ADA also survived.
Who Is Covered by the Collective
On May 16, 2025, Judge Lin granted preliminary certification of a nationwide collective on the age discrimination claim under the ADEA. The certified group covers all individuals aged 40 and over who applied for jobs through Workday’s platform since September 24, 2020, and were denied employment recommendations by the AI system.11Holland & Knight. Federal Court Allows Collective Action Lawsuit Over Alleged AI Hiring Discrimination Once HiredScore was folded in that July, the certified group expanded to include applicants scored by Spotlight and Fetch as well.4The People Space. Workday Ordered To Reveal AI Hiring Clients A separate motion for class certification on the race and disability claims is scheduled for 2026.12Fennemore Law. Preliminary Certification of Collective Action Against Human Resource AI Software Provider
Workday itself speculated during certification proceedings that the collective could encompass “hundreds of millions” of people. Judge Lin was unmoved, writing that if the collective truly reached that scale, “that is because Workday has been plausibly accused of discriminating against a broad swath of applicants.”8GovInfo. Mobley v. Workday, Inc., Order on Collective Certification The court rejected Workday’s argument that collective members should have to prove they were qualified for every position they applied to or that they had a zero percent success rate.11Holland & Knight. Federal Court Allows Collective Action Lawsuit Over Alleged AI Hiring Discrimination
If you applied for a job through a Workday-powered career portal since September 24, 2020, were 40 or older at the time, and were rejected, you may be within the certified collective. The third-party administrator identifying eligible individuals is working from client lists Workday was ordered to produce.
Workday’s Defense and the HiredScore Bias Audit
Workday’s core position is that it is a neutral technology platform, not a decision-maker. The company denies that its tools “recommend, screen out, or otherwise assess or predict applicants’ likelihood of success,” arguing that employer-clients have full control to enable, disable, use, or ignore any AI feature. Workday has said it plans to seek decertification of the collective after discovery, arguing that its features are optional and configured differently by thousands of employers, so no uniform policy exists.8GovInfo. Mobley v. Workday, Inc., Order on Collective Certification
Workday has also published the results of an independent bias audit of the HiredScore Spotlight tool, conducted by a firm called Secretariat. The audit analyzed applications from U.S. residents in the greater New York City area for the five highest-volume job profiles, using data collected between September 2025 and February 2026. Secretariat reviewed Spotlight’s simplified output (letter grades A through D) against job requirements and concluded there was “no evidence of disparate impact based on the calculated impact ratios presented.”13Workday. Responsible AI and Bias Mitigation
Workday itself emphasized the audit’s limits. The company said the analysis was “specific to Workday’s implementation of Spotlight” and was “not intended to satisfy any customer-specific legal or regulatory obligation,” and disclaimed any position on whether the tool qualifies as an “automated employment decision tool under any particular law.”13Workday. Responsible AI and Bias Mitigation The audit examined race and gender. It did not examine age, which is the basis of the certified collective.
Where the Case Stands
As of mid-2026, the case remains in active discovery. In March 2026, the court rejected Workday’s argument that the ADEA does not cover job applicants, finding that established precedent remained valid even after the Supreme Court ended Chevron deference. An amended complaint was filed on March 30, 2026, reasserting California state-law and disability claims.14Elevate Consult. How an AI Bias Audit Wasn’t Enough To Avoid Litigation Risk – Workday Story The court has also ordered Workday to produce its EEO-1 reports and OFCCP documents, finding them relevant to what the company knew about potential demographic disparities when deploying its AI tools.15Duane Morris. California Federal Court Clarifies Limits on AI Bias Testing and Applicant Data Disclosure in Mobley v. Workday
The case has already produced what legal observers consider a landmark ruling: that AI software vendors can be held directly liable for employment discrimination under an agent theory when employers delegate hiring functions to the vendor’s algorithms. For HiredScore, the practical consequence is that its tools are now inside one of the largest employment discrimination collective actions in recent memory, on the same legal footing as the Workday algorithms it was acquired to complement.