A company that provides English tutoring services to students in China has agreed to pay $356,000 to settle a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit that charged it used application software to automatically reject older applicants.
The iTutor Group Inc., which conducts business in New York, and the EEOC are seeking court approval of the settlement, according to court papers filed in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn on Wednesday in Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. iTutorGroup, Inc; Tutor Group Ltd; and Shanghai Ping’An Intelligent Education Technology Co. Ltd.
All the defendants are owned and/or controlled by Ping An Insurance (Group) Co. of China Ltd., according to court papers.
The defendants, who deny allegations of discrimination, were charged with violating the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 and the Fair Labor Standards Act
The companies were accused of programming their applicant software to automatically reject female applicants over 55 and male applicants over 60. They allegedly failed to hire more than 200 qualified applicants.
The rejected applicant that went to the EEOC said that in 2020 she was immediately rejected when she used her real over-55 birth date to apply for a tutoring job but was immediately offered an interview after she applied the next day using an earlier birth date.
Attorneys in the case did not respond to requests for comment.
The EEOC in May issued guidance on using algorithmic decision-making tools in employment decisions.
