(CN) — The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday revived a putative class action filed by an information technology worker who claims that Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram, didn't hire him because it prefers to hire foreign workers for less money.
"An employer that discriminates against United States citizens gives one class of people — noncitizens, or perhaps some subset of noncitizens — a greater right to make contracts than 'white citizens,'" wrote Judge Eric Miller, a Donald Trump appointee, in the majority opinion — with the phrase 'white citizens' taken from the legal code which prohibits discrimination.
The ruling continued: "If some noncitizens have a greater right to make contracts than 'white citizens,' then it is not true that '[a]ll persons' have the 'same right' to make contracts as 'white citizens.' That is precisely what the literal text of the statute prohibits."
Purushothaman Rajaram is an Indian-born, naturalized U.S. citizen and an IT worker. Between 2020 and 2022, he applied to work at Facebook a number of times, but was never hired. In his 2022 federal complaint, he said Facebook didn't hire him because of its "systematic preference for visa holders" for certain positions in the U.S.
"Facebook’s preference for hiring and employing visa workers is no secret," Rajaram said in his complaint. The company in 2021 agreed to pay $4.75 million to the U.S. government and another $9.5 million into a settlement fund for discrimination victims after the Justice Department filed a complaint the year before.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler dismissed Rajaram's suit, however, agreeing with Meta that under federal law U.S. citizens are not a protected class. She wrote that the law "protects primarily against racial discrimination and that 'race' is interpreted broadly and extends to alien status (that is, non-U.S. citizen status)."
In other words, immigrants can sue for discrimination, but citizens can't.
The Ninth Circuit's three-judge panel disagreed.
"Discrimination based on alienage is indeed different from racial discrimination, but it is not different in any way that is relevant to the text of section 1981," Judge Miller wrote in his opinion Thursday. "Rajaram alleges that Meta has violated that guarantee by giving noncitizens a greater right than citizens to contract for employment. He therefore stated a claim under section 1981."
Miller acknowledged that the panel majority's conclusion contradicted that of the Fifth Circuit, which in 1986 rejected a claim by a man who claimed his British-owned company failed to promote him because he was an American.
U.S. Circuit Judge Marsha Berzon, a Bill Clinton appointee, agreed with Miller's ruling. But U.S. Circuit Judge Lawrence Van Dyke, another Trump appointee, dissented, saying the law is unclear about whether it applies to everyone or just certain protected classes.
"Applying what I think is the better reading of an admittedly ambiguous text," Van Dyke wrote, "I conclude that
the statute does not protect citizens from discrimination on the basis of citizenship. In concluding otherwise, the majority unnecessarily creates a circuit split with the Fifth Circuit."
Van Dyke went on to write, "This is not an easy interpretive case, and I personally like the majority’s conclusion better than mine. It’s only natural to think that this sort of discrimination protection should be reciprocal — if noncitizens can’t be discriminated against in favor of citizens, then surely citizens shouldn’t be disadvantaged in favor of noncitizens."
The judge pointed to rates of illegal immigration in recent years.
"Given that it is easier to pay such noncitizens lower wages, it’s easy enough to see how this creates growing economic pressure to favor noncitizens over citizens," Van Dyke 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."
Rajaram's case now goes back to the Northern District of California, where it can proceed toward discovery and trial.
Attorneys for Rajaram and Meta didn't immediately respond to an email requesting a comment on the ruling.
Follow @hillelaron
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
Additional Reads
-
Disgraced Chicago tech star gets 7 1/2 years in prison June 26, 2024 -
