Palantir Sued Over Alleged Hiring Discrimination -- Update

By Tim Higgins 

Palantir Technologies has discriminated systematically against Asian job applicants since at least January 2010, the U.S. Department of Labor said in a lawsuit filed Monday.

The Palo Alto, Calif., data-mining firm is one of the world's most valuable private companies, best known for helping the U.S. track down Osama bin Laden. It has been been party to more than $340 million in federal contracts since January 2010, according to the complaint, and counts the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Army among its clients.

"Federal contractors have an obligation to ensure that their hiring practices and policies are free of all forms of discrimination," Patricia Shiu, director of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Program, said in a statement.

Palantir denied the allegations and said it would defend itself.

"We are disappointed that the Department of Labor chose to proceed with an administrative action and firmly deny the allegations," the company said in a statement. "Despite repeated efforts to highlight the results of our hiring practices, the Department of Labor relies on a narrow and flawed statistical analysis relating to three job descriptions from 2010 to 2011."

The accusation that Palantir discriminated against Asians is an oddity in Silicon Valley, where big companies including Google parent Alphabet Inc. and Facebook Inc. have been criticized for hiring too many white and Asian engineers, and too few blacks and Hispanics.

The suit, filed with the department's Office of Administrative Law Judges, threatens Palantir's government business. The office can request cancellation of the company's federal contracts and prevent it from receiving future ones.

The Labor Dept. seeks to end the hiring practices and recover lost wages, interest and other benefits for the affected class.

Investigators who reviewed Palantir's hiring operation found that Asian applicants routinely were eliminated in the résumé-screening and telephone interview phases "despite being as qualified as white applicants," the government said in the suit. "In addition, the majority of Palantir's hiring into these positions came from an employee referral system that disproportionately excluded Asians."

The suit cited several instances of bias. For a software engineer position, the government said, the company hired 14 non-Asians and 11 Asians among more than 1,160 qualified applicants of whom 85% were Asian.

"The likelihood that this result occurred according to chance is approximately one in 3.4 million," the government said in the filing.

The government said it filed the lawsuit after failing to resolve the issues through a conciliation process.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 26, 2016 19:36 ET (23:36 GMT)

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