A lawsuit claiming that Workday, the dominant human resources platform, uses artificial intelligence tools that discriminate against older, minority and disabled applicants could have far-reaching consequences here and elsewhere.

With Maryland’s largest private employer, Johns Hopkins, preparing to shift much of its hiring process onto Workday next year, and other employers in the state already using it, the lawsuit is under close watch.

“I see this case as the canary in the coal mine,” said Anthony May, a Baltimore-based attorney who has written about the use of AI in employment. “Employers need to be cognizant of how they’re using AI, how is the algorithm set up, what preventive measures have they taken to make sure they’re not discriminating.”

The suit, Mobley v. Workday, is being argued in federal court in Northern California, but could come to include job applicants across the country who say that, like the current plaintiffs, they were automatically and unfairly screened out by AI.

According to May and other human resources and legal specialists, bias can be introduced, however unintentionally, when AI uses the past as precedent, seeking out candidates who match those already in a workplace’s top ranks and perhaps hired during more exclusionary times.

“It will associate the kinds of traits it’s looking for with what these successful people have done,” he said. “Everyone at executive level went to Ivy League colleges, they all played on the lacrosse team.”

Workday said in a statement that the suit’s claims are false.

“Workday’s AI recruiting tools don’t make hiring decisions. Our customers maintain full control of their hiring processes and our tools are designed with human oversight at their core,” the statement said. “Our technology looks only at job qualifications, not protected traits like race, age, or disability. We rigorously test our products as part of our Responsible AI program to confirm our tools do not harm protected groups.”

U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin has dismissed the lawsuit’s claims of intentional discrimination, but kept those alleging the use of screening software had a disparate impact on certain groups even if it wasn’t intended.

The plaintiffs say Workday has become “a primary gateway” to the job market. According to the company, it processed almost one million applications a day in 2024.

As elsewhere, the company has a sizeable presence in the Baltimore area, although some employers use Workday for functions other than hiring, such as payroll and expense accounting.

Johns Hopkins, the state’s largest private employer, is in the process of transitioning to Workday from a competitor, SAP. Landing Hopkins as a client was considered significant enough that Workday announced the signing in a news release last year.

The company said Hopkins selected Workday systems for human capital, financial, supply chain and grants management.

Hopkins declined to comment for this article, but has said on its website that Workday will launch next year and will streamline operations such as the hiring process at the university and medical system.

“Workday will unify the entire hiring process for [Johns Hopkins Health System] within one system, eliminating manual steps and ensuring smoother collaboration between recruiters and hiring managers,” Maurio Phoenix, executive director of human resources technology at the system, was quoted as saying on a Hopkins website about the transition.

Under FAQs about the transition, Hopkins said new positions and job requisition requests at JHU and JHHS will be initiated in Workday. Recruiting for the health system will be handled in Workday, while the university will use other platforms along with Workday.

A spokesman for Workday cautioned that not all clients who use the company in the hiring process opt to use AI-driven tools.

And indeed, both Baltimore City and Baltimore County said they use Workday but not its AI-driven screening tools.

“While Workday offers AI-enabled recruitment capabilities, the city has not implemented AI resume screening at this time,” Jacia Falcon, the city’s human resources director, said in an emailed statement. “We are continuing to evaluate those features to determine how they can best support our recruitment processes.”

Similarly, Dakarai Turner, press secretary for the Baltimore County executive, said that while the county uses Workday for payroll, benefits, time and attendance and financial functions, it doesn’t utilize the company’s “recruitment module or any AI-powered applicant screening tools.

“Applicant qualifications and hiring decisions are reviewed and made by county personnel through established recruitment and selection processes,” Turner said in an emailed statement. “Baltimore County has not identified any issues related to bias or discrimination arising from its use of Workday,” he said.

And while parts of the University of Maryland system began using Workday for human resources and finances in 2024, a spokeswoman said they do not use the AI screening feature.

The lawsuit against Workday was filed in February 2023. In the coming months, attorneys will present arguments on who should be included in a class of those harmed by Workday, or even if such a class exists for the purposes of the suit. U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin has scheduled a class certification hearing in her San Francisco courtroom for March.

The closely watched case is just one that turns on how AI is used in the workplace.

Another hiring platform, Eightfold AI, was sued in January by job applicants who accused the company of compiling credit reports that it used to rank them as potential employees, which they said violates their rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The act limits how credit information can be used and requires users to verify for accuracy, disclose it to consumers and correct disputed data.

And, on July 13, a group of Meta workers sued the company, alleging it used AI to pick who would be laid off. Meta, owner of major social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has said it laid off 8,000 employees, or about 10% of its workforce, in May.

The plaintiffs said the company used activity-monitoring data and algorithm-assisted performance rankings to help determine who would be laid off, metrics that would result in lower scores for those who have certain disabilities or were on approved medical or family leave.

The lawsuits highlight how much AI is used in hiring and employment, experts say.

And in fact, they say, it goes both ways, with job seekers increasingly using AI-driven tools to tailor their resumes for the AI-driven tools that screen them.

“Some have described it as an arms race,” said Margrét Bjarnadóttir, an associate professor at the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business. “There are a lot of open questions about how these technologies are interacting with each other.”

In some ways, AI reflects the milieu in which it works, she said.

“The world is biased, and we’re building tools based on the world,” Bjarnadóttir said.

But that doesn’t let employers off the hook, she has written, saying they need to develop more “bias-aware” processes.

“If you’re using these tools, don’t use them blindly,” she told The Sun. “We can’t just build these models. We need to stress test them.

“Who is getting rejected?” Bjarnadóttir said. “You need to drill down and understand why.”

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