The ACLU has filed a complaint with California’s Civil Rights Department against Criteria Corp., alleging its hiring tool Emotify violates state anti-discrimination laws by disproportionately screening out applicants with autism. The complaint, filed Tuesday, argues that Emotify’s emotional intelligence assessments, including matching games, prediction tasks, and problem-solving scenarios, mirror clinical autism diagnostic tools so closely that they may qualify as an unlawful medical or psychological examination under California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA). The ACLU notes that even minor differences, such as assessment speed, could heighten the risk of discriminatory outcomes.

The complaint also accuses Emotify of failing to provide candidates with sufficient information to determine whether they might need accommodations or alternative assessments, another violation of state law. While the focus is on Emotify, the filing raises broader concerns about Criteria Corp.’s other products, including Cognify, its cognitive aptitude test. During development, Cognify’s creators documented statistically significant disparities in scores between Black and White test-takers, as well as between female and male test-takers, according to the ACLU.

Olga Akselrod, senior counsel for the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program, emphasized that both vendors and employers must rigorously evaluate hiring assessments to ensure compliance with anti-discrimination laws. The complaint follows a pattern of legal challenges against AI-driven hiring tools, though outcomes have varied. Recently, a court granted summary judgment in a case against Sirius XM for allegedly discriminatory hiring software, ruling the plaintiff had not shown how the employer’s alleged use of AI discriminated against him. Meanwhile, Workday faces an ongoing lawsuit in California over similar claims under FEHA.