Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday sued Cloudera Inc., a California-based artificial intelligence technology company, for allegedly discriminating against U.S. workers in favor of workers with temporary visas during the hiring process, the department announced.
- Cloudera allegedly set up a separate hiring process for U.S. workers in which they were supposed to apply via an email address that didn’t work for at least nine months, but then made a “hollow claim” to the U.S. Department of Labor that it couldn’t find any qualified U.S. workers, according to the administrative complaint.
- These actions violated not only DOL’s rules for the permanent labor certification program, or PERM, the complaint alleged, but also the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Dive Insight:
“America’s civil rights and labor laws are clear: if you want to sponsor people with temporary visas for permanent residency, you cannot discriminate against U.S. workers,” DOJ said in the complaint.
Under the PERM program, companies can hire a foreign worker to work permanently in the country but only after attempting to recruit U.S. workers.
“As with any recruitment or hiring, employers cannot illegally discriminate against U.S. worker applicants based on their citizenship status during the PERM process,” DOJ said.
Cloudera allegedly violated the INA “because the company created a separate hiring process that treated U.S. workers less favorably,” per the complaint, filed with the Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer, which has jurisdiction over INA cases.
“Employers cannot use the PERM sponsorship process as a backdoor for discriminating against U.S. workers,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of DOJ’s civil rights division, said in the news release. “The Division will not hesitate to sue companies who intentionally deter U.S. workers from applying to American jobs.”
Cloudera, in an emailed statement to HR Dive, said it takes the department’s allegations seriously and has fully cooperated with DOJ from the start. The recruiting email address in question “was simply not working as intended,” the company said.
“We do not discriminate against U.S. workers — or anyone — on the basis of citizenship status,” Cloudera said. “We believe the government’s claims misunderstand both our hiring processes and our intent, and we will address the matter through the appropriate legal channels. Cloudera is committed to fair, lawful, and open recruitment practices, and we will continue to cooperate with the DOJ as we work to resolve this matter. Because this is now pending litigation, we cannot comment further at this time.”
DOJ said the lawsuit is part of its Protecting U.S. Workers Initiative, which was relaunched in 2025 and has already secured at least 10 settlements in the past year over allegations of illegal discrimination against U.S. workers in favor of those with temporary employment visas.
DOJ’s efforts are part of a larger push by the Trump administration to prevent potential discrimination against U.S. workers and to tighten restrictions on immigrant workers, particularly those with H-1B visas.
For example, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in November published a technical assistance document explaining how anti-American bias — a form of national origin discrimination — can violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
EEOC’s guidance said national origin bias can involve discriminatory job postings, such as those that say “H-1B preferred” or “H-1B only.”