Mobley v. Workday and the question every buyer of AI hiring tools should ask

In short: Mobley v. Workday tests whether the vendor of an AI screening tool can be liable for discrimination alongside the employers that use it. In July 2024 the court let the claim proceed on the theory that Workday acted as employers’ agent; in May 2025 it certified a nationwide age-discrimination collective; in March 2026 it held that job applicants may bring age disparate-impact claims. Whatever the outcome, buyers should now put testing, human review and records in their vendor contracts.^1,2

Most AI hiring disputes are about an employer. Mobley v. Workday is about a vendor. Derek Mobley, a job applicant, alleges that Workday’s AI-based screening and recommendation tools discriminated against him and other applicants, including on the basis of age. In July 2024 a federal judge in California allowed the case to continue after Workday argued it was not the employer making the hiring decisions.¹ The court dismissed the theory that Workday was an employment agency but accepted, at that stage, that it could be liable as the employers’ agent, reasoning that its software was not simply applying employers’ criteria in a rote way but participating in the decision by recommending some candidates and rejecting others. The EEOC had filed a brief supporting the plaintiff’s theories.²