Earlier this year, we
predicted that the Department of Labor's Office of Federal
Contract Compliance ("OFCCP") would ramp up
investigations directed at rooting out alleged discrimination by
information technology companies. Many tech companies have indeed
been the focus of increasingly intense and acrimonious
investigations in 2016.
OFCCP took its enforcement efforts to the next level this week
by filing a formal administrative complaint for violations of
Executive Order 11246 (which prohibits discrimination by federal
contractors). The complaint alleges that Palantir Technologies
– a private software company headquartered in Palo Alto and
recently valued at $20 billion – discriminated against Asian
applicants for three positions (QA Engineer, Software Engineer, and
QA Engineer Intern). Specifically, the OFCCP alleges that the
company hired largely based on an employee referral system that
resulted in statistically significant underrepresentation of Asian
hires,
