Meta Must Face Lawsuit for Favoring Foreign Workers

A federal appeals court in California ruled on Thursday that Meta must face a proposed class-action lawsuit accusing it of favoring foreign workers over U.S. citizens. This decision comes after the lawsuit was initially dismissed in late 2022. The lawsuit claims Meta violated Section 1981, which prohibits discrimination in contracts, by allegedly discriminating against U.S. citizens in its hiring practices. The court ruled in a 2-1 decision that while citizenship discrimination is different from racial discrimination, it is still relevant under Section 1981.

The lawsuit was filed by software engineer Purushothaman Rajaram, who alleges Meta refused to hire him because it “prefers to hire noncitizens holding H-1B visas to whom it can pay lower wages.” Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp, has denied any wrongdoing, according to Reuters. Daniel Low of Kotchen Low, the firm representing Rajaram, stated, “Citizenship discrimination against U.S. citizens has become a significant problem in recent years with a number of tech companies improperly favoring H-1B visa workers over U.S. citizens.” He expressed satisfaction that the Ninth Circuit agreed with their interpretation of Section 1981. Meta representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Judge Lawrence VanDyke dissented in the ruling, expressing that while he preferred the majority’s conclusion, he believed it was not the court’s role to reinterpret the statute. He wrote, “A statute that protects against this sort of discrimination may be what this country needs, but it isn’t what Congress gave us in Section 1981. And it’s not my role to transform this statute into what I wish it was. I therefore reluctantly dissent.”

Rajaram applied to Meta multiple times between 2020 and 2022 without success. He filed the complaint in May 2022, seeking class-action status. The lawsuit was dismissed by a federal judge in November 2022, but Rajaram appealed, and the appeals court heard oral arguments in October.

In mid-May, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the super PAC American Values 2024 filed a lawsuit against Meta, alleging it violated the First Amendment by blocking a campaign ad on Instagram and Facebook.