Job seeker asks First Circuit to revive class action over AI interviewing tool

A New England financial consultant argues on appeal JPMorgan Chase used an AI job candidate screening platform as a de facto lie detector test in violation of Massachusetts law.(CN) — A proposed class of job applicants urged the First Circuit appeals court on Tuesday to overturn a lower court’s dismissal of their challenge to JPMorgan Chase’s use of the artificial intelligence-powered job screening platform HireVue in job interviews, which they claim is prohibited by state prohibitions against lie detector tests.Led by Massachusetts financial consultant Mozart Saint Cyr, the class claims on appeal that their the case should not have be dismissed by a federal judge who concluded the claims were “wholly conclusory” and insufficient to support the inference that Saint Cyr’s one-way HireVue video interview was a de facto lie detector test.“It’s exactly what you expect a lie detector to look like in the AI age,” Saint Cyr’s attorney Julian Diamond told the First Circuit panel during oral arguments Tuesday afternoon.U.S. Circuit Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson quickly interjected to note Saint Cyr’s complaint had not set forth any specific questions that he was asked during the job candidate screening by the HireVue Interview platform.“What makes it plausibly alleged that they used it for that purpose with regard to your client,” the Barack Obama appointee asked, noting similar cases included screenshots of the “questions that went directly to the issue of honesty” and that was lacking in Saint Cyr’s complaint.U.S. Circuit Judge Gustavo A. Gelpí also pressed Diamond for more details of questions posed during his client’s Chase interview.“What specifically was asked of him, or is there an allegation a bigger algorithm that was used to detect that, maybe, you know he shouldn’t be hired for the job,” the Joe Biden appointee asked. “For pleading, you need to know, where’s the beef?”Diamond said Saint Cyr plausibly accused Chase of using a lie detector because HireVue Interview is marketed to “scale your lie detection.”“It’s marketed as a way that makes it more difficult for candidates to game the video interview process,” he said. “Look, I think when it comes down to plaintiff’s allegations, defendant purchased and administered a test that’s marketed as a lie detector test that matches up exactly with what the statute says. A test that can tell somebody if they have the character for truthfulness, and then they administered it to plaintiff in violation of the law.”Represented by Andrew Hellman from Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP, JPMorgan Chase meanwhile urged the First Circuit panel to affirm the lower court’s dismissal of Saint Cyr’s complaint for failing to sufficiently support the inference that his HireVue interview was conducted for the purpose of detecting lies.“As your honors have highlighted, the complaint here conceivably does not allege anything about JPMorgan’s particular hire view interview: No questions that JPMorgan asked. Nothing about it at all,” Hellman said. “There’s no way to nudge the claim across the line from conceivable to plausible because there’s just nothing about how JPMorgan itself used HireVue.”U.S. Circuit Judge Joshua D. Dunlap, a Donald Trump appointee, rounded out the panel. They did not indicate how or when they would rule.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads