ATLANTA — The United States Justice Department reached an agreement with Georgia Tech last Thursday to settle claims that they unlawfully excluded students who weren't United States citizens from career opportunities on school-run job boards.
Georgia Tech will now be forced to pay a $500,000 fine to the U.S. Department of Justice as part of the penalties.
The DOJ's investigation concluded that the college violated the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) by running a job recruiting platform where third-party employers paid Georgia Tech so they could post advertisements regarding its career fairs that shut out particular non-U.S. citizens and limited their job recruitment opportunities based on their citizenship status, the DOJ's release said.
The investigation started after a student at Georgia Tech, who the DOJ said was a lawful permanent resident, accused a bank of advertising a U.S. citizen-only position on the career website services for Georgia Tech.
After the college opened an investigation into the complaint, they found more unlawful discriminatory ads that showed up on GT's recruiting platforms that dissuaded or even hindered non-U.S. citizens from applying to numerous jobs, the DOJ said.
“Our nation’s higher education institutions must ensure that their job recruiting platforms don’t promote, facilitate or enable unlawful citizenship discrimination,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “The Justice Department will vigorously enforce the Immigration and Nationality Act’s nondiscrimination mandate to ensure that college students are treated fairly and have an equal opportunity to compete for internships and jobs.”
Georgia Tech will also be forced to change its recruiting practices and fix its policies in order to comply with INA regulations, according to the DOJ.
In the 14 months since the discrimination complaint was filed with the Civil Rights Division by the student, the DOJ has collected over $1.6 million in civil penalties from 30 separate employers who used Georgia Tech's recruiting platform as a third-party job posting site to intentionally exclude non-U.S. citizens "who stand on equal footing with U.S. citizens in their ability to work, such as lawful permanent residents, refugees and those granted asylum by the federal government."